Secret Identities (Or Lack Thereof)
by DragonKey27
Summary: Wally fully expected to die when he took off for the arctic. What he didn't expect was to be flung into a universe where there is no Team and no Justice League, only a ragtag group of heroes who call themselves The Avengers. How will they react to the presence of a superhero from beyond their universe? And more importantly, will Wally ever make it home? Will overlap with Iron Man 3
1. Endgame

**I do not own Young Justice or the Avengers. They belong to Warner Brothers and Marvel respectively. All credit for existing characters goes to their respective creators.**

**Prologue: Endgame:**

North Magnetic Pole

June 20, 2016

13:53 UTC

"It's no good, Barry," Wally said to his uncle as he attempted to grab the boy's shoulder, only for his hand to pass right through.

_This is it then, _Kid Flash thought to himself. _I'm going to die. _But still he kept running. He ran for his family. For his friends. For the Team. For Artemis. He kept going knowing that if he stopped, the world was doomed.

"Artemis is so gonna kill me for this," he continued. "And don't even get me started on mom and dad."

"Kid?" Flash called out to his nephew, afraid of what was about to happen.

"Just tell them," Wally replied bluntly. "Okay?"

"KID!" Barry shouted. And in a flash of light, Wally West was gone. Before he lost consciousness, there was only one thought in his head: _I'm sorry, Artemis. _

"They did it!" M'gann shouted as vortex disappeared and the six superheroes ran (or flew in the young martian's case) over to the two exhausted speedsters kneeling in the spot where the chrysalis of The Reach's MFD once loomed.

"It's Over!" she cheered as she helped Bart to his feet.

"Congratulation!" Aqualad said as he walked over to the Flash to do the same. "You have s – "

"WAIT!" Artemis interrupted as she looked around, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. "Where's Wally?"

"Artemis," Barry began as he walked over to the young woman, mentally preparing himself to say to his nephew's girlfriend the words that would shatter her heart and torment him for the rest of his life. "He wanted me to tell you – '

"No," she gasped as she realized what he was about to say. "No," she repeated, almost a whisper this time. Hoping against all odds that he wouldn't say what she was afraid he would say. _Please don't say it, _she thought to herself._ Tell me he's trapped in another dimension or something, but please don't say __**that**__. _

"He loved you," Barry finished as he put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Artemis dropped to her knees in tears as M'gann raced over to comfort her grieving friend. A few feet away, Aqualad, Superboy, and Nightwing exchanged glances as they mourned their fallen brother in silence, listening to the sound of his girlfriend's anguished sobs echo across the arctic tundra.

* * *

North Magnetic Pole

June 20

13:59

The tranquil calm of the Arctic Circle was broken by a crack of thunder and a flash of light. Within seconds, a young redhead stumbled out of the light before falling face first into the snow. Clad in red and yellow, a quiet groan escaped the young man's lips as he lay there in the cold.


	2. The Boy In The Ice

**Chapter 1: The Boy In The Ice:**

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 64

June 20, 2012

14:00 P.M. UTC

"Sir!" Commander Maria Hill's voice called out from among the vast array of computers spread across the flying aircraft carrier's bridge. "Sensors just picked up an energy surge in the arctic. Source is unknown."

_Great, _Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. thought to himself as he turned to face his second in command. _It's barely been a month since the Chitauri invasion and now we have something else to deal with. _

"Is it the Bifrost or the Tesseract?" he asked.

"Negative," was her blunt reply. "These energy readings aren't consistent with either, nor are they consistent with any terrestrial energy source. Shall I send a team to investigate?"

"I'm calling in Stark," he decided after a moment of contemplation. "If this thing turns out to be a threat, I want to have the big guns at the ready."

"Yes sir," she said as she began issuing orders to the carrier's science and medical teams in the event that Stark returned to the mobile base with something to study or heal.

* * *

North Magnetic Pole

June 20, 2012

14:30 P.M. UTC

"Why did Fury call me in anyway?" Tony asked, more to himself than to anybody else. Unfortunately, Jarvis already had a comeback for that.

"Because, sir," the A.I. replied sarcastically, "He wanted you to be Earth's advanced guard in the event that these energy spikes were the work of a hostile force."

"Right," the billionaire mumbled to himself as they flew across the arctic tundra towards the North Pole. "What does he expect us to find anyway?" As if on cue, the Mark VIII suit's sensors picked up a faint life sign as they neared the pole. "Well I'll be," he said aloud in shock. "There really is something out there. Any clue what it is, Jarvis?'

"Scans indicate that it is human, sir." To confirm Jarvis's statement, a streak of red and yellow greeted the armored hero as he landed at the coordinates Fury provided. At his feet lay a young man, possibly in his early twenties by the look of him. He was unconscious and wearing a gaudy looking outfit that looked like it was made of Spandex. _Well he's a superhero wannabe. That much is obvious, _Tony thought to himself as he lifted the unconscious boy over his shoulders. _The question we need to ask when he wakes up is how he wound up in the arctic of all places Well, I'd better get him to the helicarrier before he freezes to death. I should probably call ahead though. _

"Fury, I'm headed for the Helicarrier." He announced as soon as the call went through.

"What did you find?" Fury asked, clearly annoyed by the man's bluntness. _Strange, _Tony thought, _I've always considered bluntness to be one of my best qualities. Anyway, back on track._

"A wannabe superhero playing dress-up," Tony replied with just a hint of his usual wit showing through despite the seriousness of this kid's situation. "Wearing spandex and everything."

"Really!?" Fury asked incredulously. _He's probably disappointed that it's something simple as opposed to a second alien invasion, _Tony thought_. Safe to say, I think we're okay for a while considering we just beat back the Chitauri. Surely that should make some noise in the intergalactic community_.

"Would I really do this over the phone?" Tony snapped.

"Alright, bring him here for medical attention. Hill and I will question him."

"You mean interrogate him, right?" Tony asked. "Come on, Nick, you don't need to be so paranoid."

"Just get him here in one piece and we'll work out the rest once he wakes up." Fury snapped back.

"Roger that," Tony replied without a hint of sarcasm in his voice as he flew the unconscious redhead to safety.

* * *

**Yes, the title of this chapter is an Avatar reference. Reviews are welcome and appreciated.**


	3. Interview

**Chapter 2: Interview:**

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 64

June 20, 2012

15:00 UTC

The first thing that Wally realized as he opened his eyes was that he was somehow alive. Why else would he be lying in a hospital bed? The second thing he realized was that he was aboard a ship of some kind, as the presence of hatches in place of doors seemed to indicate. How he had survived baffled him, but what confused him was the lack of any windows in the room. _The real question, _he thought to himself, _is if I was rescued by the Team, the bad guys, or someone completely different._

His mental speculation was interrupted by a loud squeak as the hatch opened and in stepped a dark-skinned man with an eye patch over one eye and wearing a trench coat. He was followed by a brown-haired woman who appeared close to the same age as Black Canary. They approached him with an air of trepidation that indicated that they were unsure of what to do with him. The man with the eye patch spoke first.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Surprised I'm still alive, honestly," Wally replied.

"Who are you?" the man continued.

"Kid Flash," he answered dryly, clearly irritated that even after he'd hung up the suit, people **still **couldn't remember his hero name. "How is it that nobody gets the name right?" he asked himself aloud.

"Never heard of you," the man said, clearly just as confused as Wally was. "Which is saying something considering that no wannabe super hero ever escapes our notice."

"Hey," Wally retorted, "I've been in the hero game since I was thirteen." This seemed to surprise his two guests, who remained silent for several minutes before the dialogue resumed.

"How exactly did you end up unconscious in the arctic?" the woman interjected. Wally narrowed his eyes at the question, catching on to the fact that he was being interrogated. Deciding that no harm could come from being honest (at least for now), he answered her question

"I got zapped trying to stop a Magnetic Frequency Disruptor planted by the Reach."

"What is.. The Reach?" the man asked incredulously.

"Have you guys been living under a rock for the past three months?" Wally replied bluntly, surprised that they seemed unaware of the Reach's ongoing invasion. "They've been all over the news with their whole image of benevolent neighbors as they subvert control of earth from the shadows while they discredit the Justice League in public."

"Justice League?" It was the woman who asked this time. _Are they serious?_ Wally thought to himself.

"How have you guys NOT heard of the Justice League?" he snapped.

"Probably because they don't exist," the woman shot back. "At least not here."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, growing concerned as a theory began to piece itself together in his mind.

"An hour ago our sensors detected an unknown energy surge in the arctic circle," the man replied. "When we sent a team to investigate, they found you unconscious in the snow. We think that energy surge may have been a dimensional rift that teleported you from your universe to ours." A look of understanding crossed Wally's face, signaling to his interrogators that he had reached the same conclusion himself. "One last thing," the man continued. "Can you tell me the date when you were "zapped"?"

"June 20th, 2016," Wally replied, as the implications of his situation began to weigh down on his shoulders.

"We'll be back soon," the man finished as he and the woman turned walked back towards the hatch.

When they were gone, Wally reached into one of the compartments on his gloves and pulled out a photo of the founding members of the team, taken shortly after they had liberated the League from Savage's control. In it, Kaldur and Raquel stood on opposite sides of the frame while the three couples stood together holding hands with their significant other. Dick was with Zatanna, M'gann was with Conner, and he and Artemis were together.

"I'm so sorry, babe," he whispered quietly as he broke down in tears at the thought that he might never see his family, friends, and girlfriend again.


	4. Discussions

**Chapter 3: Discussions:**

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 64

June 20th, 2012

15:05 UTC

_If this kid's powers match his name, _Fury thought, _Our budget for the Helicarrier's food stores is about skyrocket. _As the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and his second in command made their way towards the bridge, they had discussed the interview and whether or not the kid had powers. Because he called himself Kid Flash, they figured if he did, his powers were either superspeed, teleportation, or energy beams. Since someone with super speed would most likely have an extraordinarily high metabolism, they'd ordered a tray of food sent up to their guests room, which was locked from the outside and guarded by two armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, as they made their way to their next destination.

"So what do you all make of him?" Fury asked as he and Hill entered the bridge to find all the Avengers bar Thor (who was still on Asgard and could not be reached) seated around the conference table listening to the director's conversation with "Kid Flash."

"I'm not going to comment on the theory of how he got here," Captain America began as he leaned back in his chair, "Because I'm not a science expert, but-"

"I will, though," Tony interrupted. "It's certainly a plausible theory. If he was truly zapped by as much energy as he claims, that energy could have been what opened the rift in the first place."

"My concern is the fact that he supposedly started his superhero career, if he really is one, when he was still a kid," Steve continued.

"Maybe his universe has different standards than ours," Natasha Romanov suggested as she paused the footage. "But I think the question we need to ask," She added as she looked directly at Fury, "is what S.H.I.E.L.D. plans to do with him."

All eyes were on Director Fury now, waiting to find out just what S.H.I.E.L.D. had planned for the boy. Sensing their curiosity, Fury took a deep breath before he explained.

"Hill and I intend to keep his existence a secret from the Council, because you know how they'll react when they find out that it's possible, thought extremely difficult, to travel between universes." The rest of the group responded with nods of understanding, remembering the World Security Council's willingness to sacrifice thousands of civilian lives to achieve victory in the Battle of New York. They could only image how they would react to inter-universal travel.

"Because of the Council's inevitable overreaction," he continued, "we intend to find a way to send him home as soon as possible."

"I agree," Steve replied. "He obviously has family and friends who probably think he's dead, so we should definitely help him get back."

"He's also got a girl waiting for him by the sound of things," Tony added, recalling the little breakdown the kid had when he looked at the photo in his pocket. "You guys really didn't hear him?" he asked incredulously when everyone gave him weird looks.

"Let's review the footage one more time, shall we?" he continued when everyone responded with more confused stares. He rewound and fast –forwarded the conversation a few times until he finally found the part he was looking for.

"There we go," he said to himself as he played the footage while increasing the volume as high as the sound system would allow. The Avengers continued to give Stark confused glances as they watched "Kid Flash" take the photo out of the compartment in his gloves. Then they all hear it, amplified tenfold by the increased volume of the speakers. The kid said one sentence before his breakdown: "I'm so sorry babe."

"Now you belief me, right?" Tony asked as he stopped the footage.

"Congratulations," Barton answered sarcastically. "You've proved he's got a girlfriend back home. Now what do we do with him without tipping off the Council about the existence of inter-dimensional travel?"

"I intend to offer him a job at S.H.I.E.L.D.," Fury began. "And by extension, a spot on The Avengers, to keep him out of trouble until we can send him back."

"Is it really wise to let someone we know absolutely nothing about join the Avengers?" Romanov asked, twisting her chair absentmindedly as she did so.

"It isn't," Fury replied. "But considering what we're dealing with here, it's better for him to be somewhere we can keep an eye on him while keeping him away from the public. He'd be working at S.H.I.E.L.D. most of the time so the paparazzi won't be an issue."

"I'm a little concerned that he started so young," Steve began, "But I can't argue with that logic."

"No objections from me," Tony added. After a few more minutes of discussion and debate, Fury looked around the table, as each Avenger gave a nod confirming their support of Kid Flash's addition to their roster.

"Very well," Fury replied. "Hill," he said as he turned to his second-in-command. "Bring him up here."

"Yes sir," she said as she walked back towards the medical bay.


	5. Job Offer

**Fury's explanation of S.H.I.E.L.D. is partially quoted from the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wikia.**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Job Offers**

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 64

June 20th 2012

15: 20 UTC

Wally guessed that his "captors" had no intention of harming him, if the lack of restraints was anything to go by. He also guessed that they wanted to recruit him for whatever reason. Considering that he knew nothing about this group or who they were, he decided to play along until he had an opportunity to get out of there. _Not like I have anywhere to go, _he thought to himself as they walked through the corridors. _Since the Justice League obviously doesn't exist in this universe, I doubt I could just go up to Wayne manor – if it even exists – and ask to speak to Batman. _His current train of thought however, was lost the moment he set foot on the bridge.

His theory of being on a ship of some kind was confirmed by the large, floor-to-ceiling window in front of him, beyond rows of technicians manning computers most likely responsible for piloting the craft. His attention is then drawn to a conference table near the door, and the five figures seated beyond it. First is a red-headed woman dressed in a black cat suit. To her right is a man with a military haircut wearing a sleeveless leather vest. Opposite the woman are two men, one in an olive green suit and the other in a black T-Shirt. At the head of the table was a blonde man who was clearly a superhero if his outfit was anything to go by, dressed in a costume decorated with the colors of the American flag. As he looked past the table, he saw the man with the eyepatch standing near a command post.

As Wally walked into the bridge area, the one-eyed man turned around and gestured towards the table.

"Have a seat," he said. Wally took a seat across from the red, white, and blue superhero. "Hill," he continued, "take the helm."

"Yes sir," the woman, Hill apparently, replied as she walked to take the man's place at the ship's command center.

"I think it's time we were properly introduced," the man turned his attention to Wally. "I'm Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"S.H.I.E.L.D?" Wally asked, confused as to what Fury meant.

"It's short for Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division," Fury began. "We're an international military and counter-terrorism intelligence agency. We handle the things that are beyond the capabilities of normal law enforcement and militaries. Weapon smuggling, alien invasions, a radiologist developing X-Ray vision… You name it, we deal with it."

"And what does S.H.I.E.L.D. want with me exactly?" Wally asked, hoping for an honest answer.

"All we want," Fury continued, "is to get you home."

"What's the catch?" Wally was clearly suspicious of any strings attached to this offer.

"No catch," Hill called as she stepped away from the command post and returned to the conference table. "The council responsible for overseeing our agency is made up of five morons who thought nuking Manhattan was a better way to end an alien invasion than a superhero team-up. Given that, we have no desire to find out how they'll react to the idea of inter-dimensional travel."

"Okay," the speedster replied, satisfied with the answer but still suspicious nonetheless. "But that's going to take a while to achieve. What will I do in the meantime?"

"We'd like to offer you a job at S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep you busy and off the organization's radar," Fury added. "As for food and housing, we're offering you a spot on the Avengers, our resident superhero team over here," he continued as he indicated the people seated around the table.

Wally sat in silence as he thought Fury's offer over. He certainly wasn't going anywhere for a while, and he might as well get a job while he waited, if the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was being truthful about his intention to send Wally home. Working with fellow superheroes wouldn't do any harm either, especially since he'd need to adjust to this universe. Taking a deep breath, he made his decision.

"I don't have any other option do I?" He asked as he looked up at his new boss.

"I'll take that as a yes." Fury said with a nod of approval. "We'll have to forge documents and credentials to hide your extra-universal origins from the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. We'll also provide all the gear you'll need, plus a uniform if you want. Now I think it's time the Avengers introduced themselves."

And with that, the other heroes sounded off. First was the man obviously dressed for the role.

"Steve Rogers. Captain America."

Next was the guy dressed in leather.

"Clint Barton. Hawkeye."

After him was the red-head.

"Natasha Romanov. Black Widow."

Followed by the man in the green suit.

"Bruce Banner. The Hulk."

And finally, the guy with the T-shirt.

"Tony Stark. Iron Man."

You guys really don't care about keeping your identities a secret, do you?" Wally asked as Stark put his hand down.

"Well," Stark began, "Banner's got the perfect cover already and the two master assassins over there," he indicated Barton and Romanov, "maintain cover on principle. The rest of us have never had opportunity or reason to keep our identities a secret."

"Look who's talking," Rogers retorted.

"Anyway," Fury interrupted before the two powerhouses came to blows again. "You should probably take him back to the tower and get a room set up for him."

"Forget room," Stark replied. "I'm giving him a whole floor. Come on guys," He continued as he gestured to the Avengers, "let's get this induction party started. We can trade origin stories when we get back to HQ."

Wally nervously followed his new teammates as they left the bridge, his thoughts returning to his family and friends as they walked through corridor after corridor and down several flights of stairs. He doubted he'd be able to get home for a while. Unless he was able to send a message home, he'd have to be prepared for the possibility that Artemis will have moved on by the time he gets back. The thought made his heart break all over again, but his train of thought hit a brick wall when he walked out the next hatch and found himself standing on the deck of a _flying aircraft carrier. _While technology in his universe was more advanced, the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. could make something as large as an aircraft carrier fly in Earth's atmosphere was still pretty amazing in and of itself."

"Breathtaking isn't it?" Banner smiled as the Avengers and their guest walked over to a waiting quinjet with a large letter A painted on the side.

"Yeah," Captain America added. "Technology never ceases to amaze, does it?"

"Tech in my universe is a little more advanced," Wally replied, "but a flying aircraft carrier is still pretty impressive." With that, The three continued to discuss the technological capabilities of the Helicarrier as they flew back to the Tower, the rest of the group already warming up to their newest, if temporary, member.

* * *

**If you're wondering why S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and the Avengers are referred to by their last names, in the story, It's because Wally doesn't know them on a personal level the way he does his friends on the Team. As he grows closer to the Avengers, the story will reflect that by using their first names more often.**


	6. Settling In

**The info on the back-stories of Wally, the Justice League, and the Justice Society of America came from the Young Justice Wikia and by extension AskGreg on Station8**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Settling In:**

Avengers Tower

June 20th, 2012

16:00 PM EST

"Welcome to Avengers Tower," Stark proclaimed dramatically as the six heroes walked into the half-finished living room of the tower from two entry points: Wally and the rest of the Avengers from the elevator, and Stark from a door above the bar. The lounge area had been under construction since the Battle of New York, so there were scaffolds and all manner of construction equipment all over the room. "Sorry about the mess," he continued. "The tower was initially designed as an office for Stark Industries, my family's company, but after the Chitauri invasion, we've begun converting it into our HQ, so we're still under construction."

"This is incredible," Wally gasped, impressed by the tower and barely even acknowledging the construction.

"So now that we're back at our home base," Captain America began, "why don't you start by telling us your real name?"

Wally paused for a moment to think. He knew that it'd get old having the Avengers call him Kid Flash all the time, but he didn't necessarily want to reveal his secret identity. On the other hand, nobody on the team really had one to begin with, so it was probably okay.

"Wally," he replied as they walked over to the sofa and chairs. "Wally West."

"So, Wally," Stark called out as he poured himself a beverage at the bar while the rest of the group sat down. "Do you eat Shwarma?"

"Seriously, Tony?" Rogers asked as the man walked over to join them. "I think we should ask him what he can do before we go all out on the welcome party."

"It's okay," Wally replied. "I'll eat anything. Just make sure you get enough to feed ten people in addition to you guys."

When all he got from his hosts was confused looks, he explained.

"I have super speed," he continued, "so I burn a lot of calories running a few m.p.h. shy of the speed of sound." He grinned when Rogers, Stark, and Banner's jaws dropped at his statement and all Romanov and Barton could say was "impressive."

"Alright then," Stark said as he finally snapped out of his shock at Wally's statement. "J.A.R.V.I.S.!" he shouted to nobody in particular. "Call in an order of fifteen baskets of Shwarma, then get the armor ready for takeoff."

"Of course, sir." Wally almost jumped out his skin as a British-accented voice answered from nowhere. He was used to having an automated announcement system in a superhero's base like the Justice League used, but this surprised him.

"Who was that?" He asked as he looked around for the source of the voice.

"Oh, that's just J.A.R.V.I.S.," Romanov answered as Stark put down his drink and walked back toward the door from which he entered the room. "He's the A.I. that runs the tower, Tony's mansion, the user interface for the Iron Man armor…"

"Cool," Wally said, his eyes wandering though he heard her explanation. He was looking out the window watching Stark walk down a narrow walkway that extended over the street below, mechanical arms attaching the red armor he wore when they left the Helicarrier to his body piece by piece as he walked. When the armor was complete, he just took off.

"So…" Wally began as he turned back to the four other superheroes seated around the coffee table, unsure of what to say next. "Five seems like a small roster for a superhero alliance.

"Six actually," Barton replied. "Thor's off on Asgard at the moment."

"Thor," Wally said, making sure he heard them right. "As in the Norse god of thunder?"

"Yep," Romanov added. "Although in our universe at least, the gods and monsters of Norse mythology are just aliens with advanced tech and extraordinarily long lifespans instead of actual deities."

"Wow," was all he could say in reply, continually amazed by the differences between this universe and his own.

"As for the small roster," Rogers added, "we just came together to save the earth form an alien invasion a little over a month ago."

"How many superheroes does your universe's team-up have?" Banner asked, curious about what the new kid's world was like.

"Twenty three on the League and 13 on the Team when I left."

"Team?" Rogers was the one who asked this time.

"Some of the League members took protégés, and after a few years we became the Legaue's covert ops division. We'd handle the covert stuff that politics would prevent the league from doing themselves."

"And you all started when you were teenagers?" Rogers was clearly a little concerned by the idea of heroes starting so young.

"Some of us did. The rest got involved either before that or after they finished High School. And it was always through a Justice League member. I can't really go into detail on the backstories of some of them though because I don't know them that well, but for the most part the Justice League members usually fit into four general categories: billionaires with too much time on their hands, scientists who got superpowers from a lab accident, aliens who migrated to earth, and other races that have been living on earth for as long as humanity has like Atlantians and Amazons."

"Atlantis exists in you universe?" Barton asked in credulously.

"Yep," Wally replied.

"What did I miss?" Stark shouted as he walked back into the room carrying several take-out bags full of shwarma.

"Just discussing the differences between his universe and ours," Banner replied.

"And?" he asked, hoping to hear what juicy bits he'd missed.

"There are six times as many heroes in his universe, the youngest ones started when they were teenagers and handle covert-ops, and Atlantis exists," Banner answered breathlessly.

"Aw man," Stark continued as he passed out food to everybody. "I miss all the good stuff."

"So how were the Justice Leage and this cover-ops team founded?" Barton asked as they started dinner.

"Well," Wally began as he set down his food. "The seven founders of the Justice League came together to defeat an alien invasion, kind of like how you guys did, in 2003. Initially, the League kept its existence a secret until their hideout was discovered and attacked by the bad guys three years later. After that, the league went public and expanded their roster gradually. Some of them, like Batman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, and the Flash, ended up taking on protégés to take their places when they retired from hero work. I was the protégé of The Flash, who's also my uncle. In 2010, Aqualad, Robin - Batman's protégé; Speedy – Green Arrow's protégé; and I were set up to start the path to League membership, unfortunately, the League was doing things in baby steps and we were tired of just playing tag-along while they fought crime on a nightly basis."

"Superheroes fight crime in your dimension?" Stark asked, intrigued.

"Yeah," Wally replied. "We pretty much save the world by day and lock up burglars, muggers, and rapists by night. Anyway, back to the story: So Speedy went solo and changed his hero name to Red Arrow. Robin, Aqualad, and I went off on our own and busted a genetics lab in D.C. doing illegal cloning. When the League showed up to help with the clean-up, we told them in no uncertain terms that we'd be doing this kind of stuff with or without them." Wally noticed the concerned looks on Banner and Roger's faces and could tell what they were thinking.

"So the League came up with a compromise: we'd do all the covert ops stuff on their terms in exchange for the recognition that we were ready for bigger fish than bank robbers and muggers. So we pretty much kept that up for five years, more teen heroes came on, and others left. Some moved up to the Justice League; Some, like my girlfriend and I, retired so we could go to college and settle down; And yes, a few of them died."

"I'm still uncomfortable about having teenagers in life-or-death situations like that," Rogers commented when Wally finished explaining the story of the Justice League and the Team.

"With all due, respect, Captain," Wally began.

"You don't need to be so formal kid," the superhero replied. "You can call me Steve when we're not out saving the world."

"Alright, Steve," Wally continued. "It wasn't something we were forced into. We all chose that life for various reasons. Some started because their parents were murdered and we were raised by superheroes, others joined because we had family on the League and they wanted in on the action, and some had nowhere else to go."

"So how did you become a superhero?" Stark asked as they continued eating their dinner, intrigued by their new teammate's history. "And enough with the formalities, by the way. We're all on a first name basis with each other, and you should be, too. "

"Well, Tony," Wally began, "to understand my origin story, you need to know the lineage of the Flash."

"Speaking of which," Bruce added. "You're what, 21 right? Why keep calling yourself Kid Flash? Why not just call yourself Flash?"

"That mantle's still taken," Wally answered. "Anyway, back to storytime: Back in the 1930's Jay Garrick, the first Flash, gained his super-speed in a lab accident. With his enhanced speed, he became a founding member of the Justice Society of America, a precursor to the Justice League."

"Kind of like how the SSR was a precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha cut in as they all finished their meals.

"Anyway," Wally continued, "Because Jay didn't keep his identity a secret, one fan, who happened to be my uncle, was able to discuss his powers and the lab accident at length and recreate the experiment. When Uncle Barry gained his own powers of super-speed, Jay retired from hero work and passed down the mantle of The Flash down to Barry."

"If only I could do that," Bruce commented forlornly.

"Don't complain, Bruce," Tony commented "You've done a remarkable job at keeping your inner rage monster in check.

"As I was saying," Wally went on, starting to get annoyed with the constant interruptions. "When I was a kid I idolized The Flash, and when I found out that my idol was my uncle, I was ecstatic. I begged him to let me be his sidekick. But Uncle Barry was a little more reluctant to take on a protégé the way Batman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman did. He refused, but that didn't stop me. I recreated the experiment that gave both Flashes their powers, but I only succeeded in blowing up my family's garage and putting myself in the hospital." Wally noticed how they all cringed when he said that.

"Uncle Barry blamed my little mishap on himself, since I had used his notes to recreate the experiment. When I got out of the hospital, I finally got my powers. As a result, Uncle Barry agreed to make me his apprentice on the condition that I followed his every order. And that's my origin story. That was about two years before we founded the team. While I was on the team, I met my girlfriend, Artemis. After we finished high school, we decided to hang up our costumes and focus on college. We both came out of retirement to help the Team and the League defeat another alien invasion. I was going to pass on the mantle to my cousin Bart, but then I got hit by the Reach's doomsday device and here I am."

When he was finished reminiscing about his past, he looked at all the Avengers to see a mixture of awe, shock, and concern on their faces.

"Fury told us that you said the last time you were conscious was 2016," Bruce began. "I'm thinking that aside from the 4-year difference, the dates and times between those two universes are exactly the same."

"Which would therefore eliminate any confusion if he shows up a month or so after he left looked a year or so older," Tony added, the beginnings of an idea starting to form in his head.

"So without any trans-universal time differences," Wally added as well, recognizing where the two were going with this. "The only challenge to sending me home is getting me out of this universe and into my own. That's going to take a lot of energy."

"Say, Natasha," he continued as he turned to the red-headed spy seated a few seats over from him, "Do you think Director Fury would mind if I helped out on the universal rift project? I have a few ideas that might work."

"I don't think he'd mind," she answered.

"I like this kid already," was all Tony could say.


	7. Major Nerdage

**This is the first of 3 (maybe 4) Wally-Avengers bonding chapters.**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Major Nerdage:**

Avengers Tower

June 27th, 2012

9:00 A.M. EST

"Are we all set?" Wally asked as he braced himself to run in the room that Tony had set up to test his maximum speed. After Wally had explained that he had never been able to break the sound barrier before, Bruce had suggested the possibility that the energy from the Reach's MFD might have given him a power boost. The three nerds in the under-construction tower were all intrigued by the idea, and were about to test it out.

"We're good to go," Tony shouted from across the room where they'd set up a speedometer to track his speed as he ran laps. "Ready to test your top speed in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"

In an instant Wally took off, running as fast as he could push himself. He reached his old record in less than a minute, but to his surprise he could go faster still. He broke the sound barrier (and he was grateful that there weren't any windows in this test area), but he still kept accelerating. Only when he felt that he was as fast as Barry and Bart did he finally slow down.

"I take it I did well?" he asked rhetorically as he staggered over to grab the water bottle and protein bars they'd set aside to get his energy back up once he was done. He chuckled to himself when he realized that the only response he was getting from the two science experts of The Avengers was awe-struck, slack-jawed stares as they looked at the results.

"Well," Bruce mumbled as he overcame his shock, "it seems our theory has been proven correct. You broke the sound barrier in minutes, kid."

"Thanks," Wally replied. "I think my top speed is equal to Uncle Barry's now."

"So now that we've proven that the kid can break the sound barrier in sneakers," Tony spoke up. "What do we do now?" The three superheroes were silent for several minutes as they brainstormed ideas to pass the time. Director Fury was working on fabricating documents necessary for Wally to be hired by S.H.I.E.L.D., so until he was able to start training, he was stuck hanging around the tower all day. He enjoyed spending quality time with the Avengers, but he was starting to get bored. Then, an idea popped into his head.

"We could brainstorm ways to get me back to my own universe," he offered.

"Sounds like a great idea," Bruce replied.

"Not to say that we don't like having you around," Tony added as they got in the elevator to head up to the lab, "but breaking through the barrier between universes will be an interesting challenge."

"I have a theory about that," Bruce commented once they stepped out of the elevator and into the top floor laboratory. "Did you download the footage from the collapse of the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. Project after you hacked the Helicarrier's mainframe before the Battle of New York?"

"I do," Tony replied, ignoring Wally's questioning look. "I presume you'd like to re-watch it?"

"You got it," Bruce replied.

* * *

"I think I see what you've got in mind, Bruce," Wally began when the video finally ended nearly an hour later. "I got zapped with all that energy because it didn't have anywhere else to go. But if we can recreate that energy nexus like the one in the video, and modify one of Tony's Iron Man suits to absorb that energy…"

"We could theoretically replicate the dimensional rift and send you back to your own universe," Tony finished as he put down the beer he'd been sipping throughout the video.

"We should talk to Fury," Banner commented. "See if S.H.I.E.L.D. has recovered the Tesseract harness from the ruins of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. We either repair or recreate it and create a modified Iron Man suit, or modify one of Tony's old ones. Once we've got all that set up, we try to contact Asgard and ask to borrow the cube so we can test our idea."

"I'll go talk to Fury now," Tony offered as the three science nerds re-entered the elevator. He got off a few floors down in order to retrieve his cell phone. Bruce got out a few minutes later to make himself an early lunch.

Wally smiled as he walked back into his new quarters in the tower. There was still a lot of work to be done to get him home, but the idea that they'd come up with now was a start.

"Hang in there, guys," he said aloud even though his friends and family weren't able to hear him. "I'll find a way."

* * *

**So now the science nerds have a plan to get Wally home. I hope I've made their plan pretty clear. If not, just PM me, and I'll rework it to be clearer.**


	8. Mourning

**This chapter, like the prologue, is a reenactment of scenes from Endgame. Again, I own nothing in this story. **

* * *

**Chapter 7: Mourning:**

Watchtower

July 4th, 2016

21:16

"This is not the time for you to resign," Kaldur argued as he and Dick walked into the main room of the Watchtower.

"I'm not resigning," the young man replied. "Just taking a leave of absence. And besides," he continued. "If you need help, "Barbara's more than ready to step up."

"Agreed," he noted as they looked over to where the red-headed heroine was standing monitoring computer feeds. "But Dick …"

"I need a break, Kaldur," his friend interrupted. "You, me, and Wally, we founded this team," Nightwing continued, his grief evident in his voice. "Without him…"

"I understand," Kaldur finished with a sigh as the two friends stood in silence.

* * *

Meanwhile, the new Kid Flash stood in the memorial garden, looking up at the holographic statue of his predecessor. His mournful contemplation was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"You look good," Artemis called out as she walked up to Wally's successor.

"Really?" Bart replied as he turned to face her wearing Wally's signature outfit. Though she kept a straight face, it made her tear up inside how much he looked like Wally in that outfit. "Because I feel like a fraud."

"Well don't," she said as she reached him. "You're honoring Wally's memory by becoming Kid Flash. I know he'd be proud."

"Thanks," he answered as he scratched the back of his head, sending another pang of grief through her heart as she was reminded of Wally. "So," he continued, looking at her orange attire. "You suited up. But as Tigress?"

"Artemis was Wally's partner," she answered with a mournful look on her face. It hurt just looking at the green outfit that she'd worn on countless missions with him. She'd spent the first few days after his death lying in their bed at night, sobbing until she fell asleep. It was almost a week before she was even able to leave the apartment, and another week before Kaldur finally convinced her to rejoin the team for a while to cope. "I need some distance," she went on. "I need a change, so let's see how Tigress does."

"As a hero?" Bart asked cheerfully as she put on her mask.

"As a blonde," she replied with a smirk. The pain of losing Wally was still there, but she would keep going. She knew that nobody could replace him, and she had no intentions of reentering the dating pool, but Wally would still want her to live her life. _I'll do it for him, _she thinks to herself. _For Wally._

* * *

**Every few chapters we'll pop back in and see how everybody's doing in the Young Justice universe, but the main focus of this story will be with Wally and the Avengers. **


	9. Superhuman

**Sorry this chapter took so long. Life is crazy.**

**Anyway, since last chapter Wally hung out with Iron Man and Hulk, this time, you get to see what happens when Kid Flash and Captain America go out for lunch.**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Superhuman**

New York City

July 11th, 2012

12:30 P.M.

"Hey Wally," Steve whispered to the young speedster as the waitress made her way through the throngs of restaurant patrons carrying the duo's lunch. "Try not to eat at super speed, will you? We don't want to blow your cover before you've even started at S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Don't worry Steve," Wally replied with a chuckle, "I'll be careful with when I use my power."

As soon as the words left his lips, the two superheroes saw a random patron bump into the waitress, a friend of Steve's he'd met before the Chitauri invasion named Beth, knocking her and their food towards the floor. Time slowed to a crawl as Wally got up and grabbed the food and brought the waitress towards their table with super speed. After taking a moment to overcome her surprise at an averted accident, she put their food on the table.

"Here's your food, boys," she said. "Let me know if you need anything else." Once she was out of earshot, the two superheroes turned to their (considerably large in Wally's case) meals. As they ate their lunches, Steve gave the younger hero a glare that would have made Batman jealous.

"What did I say about not using your powers?" he asked as they continued their meal.

"Hey," Wally retorted jokingly. "First, it was an emergency and I prevented an accident. Second, you told me not to use my speed to eat."

While Steve finished his meal (he'd only gotten a steak with fries) Wally thought about his time in this universe so far as he made his way through his multiple plates of food. Black Widow and Hawkeye were off on various assignments for S.H.I.E.L.D. most of the time, so he hadn't really interacted with them enough to form an opinion of them. He had fun doing various science projects with Tony and Bruce, but they were several years older than him and although his pitied what had happened to Bruce, he found it difficult to bond with them despite their shared interest in science. He'd have to wait and meet Thor before making his judgment on him, though, but once he learned the backstory of Captain America, he and Steve bonded almost instantly. As a fellow fish out of water, Steve understood what he was going through and the two helped each other cope with their new environment. Wally had even convinced Steve to come up with a list of new things to try.

"You know what I meant," the super soldier shot back with a smirk. "So how's the path to heading home going?"

"Pretty well," the speedster answered as he continued his gargantuan meal. "Director Fury's trying to contact Asgard and open negotiations to borrow the Tesseract to get me home. Tony and Bruce are already working on modifying one of his newest models of armor to absorb the cube's energy." Despite the progress they were making, Wally couldn't help thinking back to the possibility of Artemis being with someone else by the time he got back. Steve noticed the concern on his friend's face and commented on it.

"You don't sound too happy," Steve commented. Wally hesitated a moment before deciding to tell the Captain what was on his mind. So far he trusted Steve and Bruce more than he trusted Tony, Clint, or Natasha.

"I'm looking forward to getting home and everything," he began. "But I;m afraid that the longer it takes, the sooner my friends and family will move on. And then my girlfriend, Artemis,"

"Will be with someone else," Steve finished as Wally finally swallowed the last of his food. "I know how you feel," he continued. "When I was finally thawed out, my girlfriend had married one of my old war buddies and already was up to grandkids. But even though she was physically older than me and living in a nursing home, we're still close friends and we still care about each other."

"I'm still a little nervous about Artemis moving on," Wally replied once Beth returned with their check. "But I get the point: even if she's recovered romantically, that doesn't mean we can't still be friends."

"Exactly," Steve answered as he put enough twenty dollar bills in with the check.

"Thanks for the advice, Steve," Wally added as the two superheroes got up and exited the restaurant, continuing to chat about their love lives and heroics.

* * *

**So yes, Steve and Wally talk about what happened when they came back from the dead (from the point of view of others) and their loved ones had moved on. And yes, Beth is the woman who saw Steve without his mask on and thanked him and the Avengers on TV (If you want to re-watch the movie to check, her first line was "What? That this was somehow their fault?" **


	10. Orientation

**Sorry for the wait. I'll try to have chapter 10 up within the next 2 weeks.**

* * *

**Chapter 9: Orientation: **

Location Classified

July 18th, 2012

12:00 P.M. Time Zone Classified

Wally couldn't help but be impressed as Agents Barton and Romanov escorted him through the corridors of The Hub, which he was told was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secondary base of operations. Despite his better judgment, he couldn't help but stare with awestruck joy at everything he saw, from the medical facilities to the research labs. Since nobody had paid any notice of him (in part due to his companions' reputations being the topic of every whispered conversation he overheard), he figured it was safe to assume that his astonished behavior was typical of most recruits on their first day. _If this is only their back-up base, _he thought as he and his escorts arrived at an interview room deep in the heart of the base's labyrinthine network of tunnels, _I can't wait to see the main HQ. _

His musings ended as he walked into the room to find Director Fury and Commander Hill seated around a small, circular table. To Fury's left was a woman he'd never seen before. She was wearing glasses and looked to be somewhere between Black Canary's age and his mother's. Her brown hair was died a dull red at the tips. As Barton and Romanov (they had insisted he never refer to them by their first names when on duty) took their seats, the woman stood up and shook his hand.

"Agent Victoria Hand," she introduced herself. "I oversee all operations run out of The Hub."

"Wally West," the speedster reciprocated the introduction before they sat down. As Wally glanced nervously towards Fury to inquire how much Agent Hand knew, the director spoke.

"Agent Hand has been briefed on everything regarding your situation, and has been sworn to secrecy," Fury began. "Because of the technology and research involved in getting you home, we've decided to create a top-secret division of S.H.I.E.L.D. to deal with inter-dimensional incidents and visitors like you."

"What about keeping him a secret from the Council?" Romanov spoke up. "Surely somebody involved with the project would spill the beans if the council were do a progress review."

"Which is why only a select few will be asked to join this unit," Fury replied as he passed out manila folders to everyone. "The group will consist of the scientists involved with the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. project, Mr. Stark, Dr. Banner, Captain Rogers, and the six of us. Stark and Banner will assist Dr. Selvig and the research team with construction of the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. project."

"O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project?" Barton interrupted curiously.

"We're Trying to send a guy presumed dead in his own universe back to the land of the living," Fury answered, growing irritated at the constant interruptions.

_Pretty fitting name, _Wally thought to himself. _Kind of reminds me of Cadmus. _Thinking about home made his heart ache more, but he took a deep breath and returned his thoughts to the conversation at hand.

"Agent Hand will supervise the division," Fury continued. "Everybody involved in the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project will report directly to her and no one else. Hand will answer to Commander Hill and she to me. And you, _Agent _West, will serve as an accuracy consultant to the research team while serving as a forensic analyst for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the meantime."

"Accuracy consultant?" Wally inquired, unsure of what the director meant.

"When we test our probe we need to make sure it goes to the right universe," the one-eyed man answered.

"That makes sense," the newly-recruited S.H.I.E.L.D. agent replied as he leaned back in his chair. "So what will this new division be called?'

"The Alternate Reality Monitoring and Operation Response Program," Agent Hand spoke up. "A.R.M.O.R. for short."

* * *

**I've not much of a Marvel Comics buff, so I know that A.R.M.O.R. isn't like this in the comics. But since it's confirmed to exist in the MCU but not really elaborated on, I felt I could safely re-purpose it to suit this story without contradicting the MCU so far. **


	11. Retirement

**Sorry about the delay in getting this chapter up, but school just started again this past week and my life is back to the sanity consuming nightmare it was before winter break. From this point forward I won't be able to update secret identities as often, but I will try and do at least one chapter a month in the midst of all the crazyiness.**

* * *

**Chapter 10: Retirement:**

The Watchtower

August 1st, 2016

9:00 A.M. UST

_Time to get this over with_, Artemis thought to herself as she stepped out of the Zeta Tube into the main lobby of the Watchtower to find Batgirl on the comm station, no doubt monitoring the progress of whichever groups were out at the moment. Barbara noticed her arrival and waved.

"Hey Artemis!" she called out as Artemis walked past the communications area. "I take it you're taking today off?"

"Kinda," Artemis replied as she waved back. "Any word from Nightwing?"

"No," the red-headed bat replied as Artemis walked over. "He's still off the grid."

"Are Kaldur and Bart here, or are they out in the field?" she asked as Barb shifted through news feeds for potential crises that would require the presence of either the League or the Team.

"Bart, Jaime, and Virgil are in the kitchen," Batgirl answered. "Kaldur should still be in the memorial garden."

_I guess Kaldur and I have something in common, _she thought to herself as she thanked her friend and headed for the memorial garden. _We've both lost the love of our life. _She ended her internal monologue after she entered the garden to find Kaldurahm standing next to the holographic statue of his childhood friend and love, Tula.

"The pain never goes away, does it?" she asked as she walked up behind him.

"No," he replied without glancing in her direction. "It doesn't. All we can do is honor their memories and carry on."

_I was wondering how to bring that up,_ she thought to herself as she turned to face her old friend.

"I wanted to talk to you about that, actually," she said. "I'm leaving the team. For good this time."

"I don't understand," her former team leader began, "why are you…" He stopped as she brought up her hand and patted her stomach, hoping he got the message. He did, if his eyes widening was any indication. _Thank goodness Kaldur figured it out pretty easy, _she thought. _I don't think I could handle having to spell it out to more than just Bart. _

"Wally's the father, isn't he?" he said, for it was more of a statement than a question.

"Who else would it be?" She chuckled. "I can't stay on the team and raise our kid at the same time."

"I understand," the Atlantean said as he leaned in to give her a goodbye hug. "But even though you're resigning from the team, we will always be there for you."

"Thanks, Kal," Artemis replied as she turned to leave the room. "And now I move on to the real challenge: Telling Bart. I've already told both our families. I'm going to tell Z, Rocket, M'gann, Karen, and Barb later, but Dick's been off the grid for over a month now so I have no idea how to get a hold of him. If you hear from him, can you let him know to stop by my place so I can tell him myself and record his reaction?"

"Of course," Kaldur chuckled as the former archer left the garden. "Good luck telling Bart. Let us know if you need anything."

"I will!" she called out as she headed towards the kitchen and braced herself for the inevitable super-sonic babbling from Bart when he heard the news.

* * *

**I know it's not really original to have a post-Endgame fic where Artemis is pregnant with Wally's child, but after listening to Recruits (a radio play that serves as a crossover between Young Justice, Gargoyles, and the Spectacular) and hearing Artemis mention picking up Lian and "JW", I'm convinced that it would have happened if we'd gotten a third season. I know, the radio play is non-canon, but Greg Weisman did confirm when asked that the Hand of Valmont (which was mentioned in the radio play) would eventually come into play in the Gargoyles canon. So I thought, if there are tidbits mentioned in their that would be used in canon for Gargoyles, why not Young Justice? **


	12. Day One

**Chapter 11: Day One: **

Rhode Island

August 19th, 2012

2:00 A.M. CST

_Why did my first mission have to be analyzing a suicide bombing?_ Agent West wondered as he weaved his way through the panicked civilians toward the site of the recent attack. _I know it's terrible that this happened, but it's kind of a depressing way to spend my first day on the job. _He'd been officially recruited at the end of July, and had breezed through forensic and combat training. Because S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists required master's degrees, he would have to work as a crime scene analyst like Uncle Barry to avoid attracting too much attention. After weeks of sitting in the tower doing nothing, he was anxious to get out in the field – just not over something as depressing as this.

He made it to the bomb site that was now cordoned off by the police. As two officers approached him with the obvious intent of turning him back, he flashed his new badge.

"Agent West," he introduced himself, as they stopped. "I'm here to run forensics for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Good luck with that," one officer responded. "Our CSIs already combed over the whole thing."

"No bomb wreckage. No corpses. Nothing." The other added.

"All the same," Wally replied. "I still need to canvas the site in case they missed something." And with that, he climbed over the barricade and made his way toward the epicenter of the blast.

An hour of inspection and analysis confirmed the two officers' assessment. There were no bomb casings left over, and there wasn't enough of the bomber left to identify. Taking out his phone, he started looking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s crime database for anything similar. Ordinarily, something like this would be handled by other government agencies, but because of an increase in super-villains in this world, Director Fury felt it was necessary to determine if this attack was an ordinary bombing or if there were super-powered or alien elements in play.

As he entered the crime scene details, his eyes widened when he saw the other three results from his search. Apparently, there were three previous terrorist attacks by a super-villain calling himself "The Mandarin." His minions' strikes, like this one, left no evidence and few – if any – survivors. His heart rate accelerating to superhuman speeds, he sent off a quick text to The Hub regarding his findings before he began packing up his briefcase. Checking his phone again, he found a new message from S.H.I.E.L.D. command. It read _Return to Hub for debrief. Quinjet will be waiting at Avengers Tower. _

Despite the somber atmosphere of the small town that had inexplicably become a target for an international terrorist, Wally couldn't help but feel a bit excited about the prospect of bringing the guy down as his first assignment for S.H.I.E.L.D. As if on cue, he walked past an electronics shop, and all the televisions were displaying the same static he'd gotten used to seeing when Conner just sat on the couch staring at the crackling screen. His inner monologue was interrupted when a voice issued from the synchronized speakers.

"Some people consider me a terrorist," an older man's voice began. "I consider myself a teacher."

* * *

**Yeah I know the third Mandarin bombing probably wasn't in Rhode Island (there are news snapshots in the scene where Tony is reviewing all the details of the Mandarin's attacks before his mansion gets blown up in Iron Man 3, I just can't get a clear look at what each of the holographic news clippings say) but I wanted to have Wally investigate the Mandarin's attacks in an area that would be a short run for him from New York. Anyway, I'm sorry this chapter took so long. The last few weeks have been crazy for me with scholarship applications and everything, so I haven't had much time to write this out. I'm still going to stick to my one chapter a month plan unless my homework load next quarter is lighter (which given my luck this school year, is unlikely). As always, let me know what you think.**


	13. Progress Report

**For those of you wondering about the Mandarin bombing last chapter, I'm saving that Chekhov's Gun for later.**

* * *

**Chapter 12: Progress Report:**

The Hub

August 16th, 2012

2:00 A.M.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen," Victoria Hand began as she stood before the assembled scientists and Avengers from the A.R.M.O.R. Program at the start of their first progress report. "I know it's early, but as head of Operations at the Hub I have a tight schedule. This was the only time to pencil in a progress report." _Well that's a pretty big understatement, _Wally thought to himself in the back of the room as Hand looked out to see everybody nodding in begrudged understanding. "So," she continued, "what's our progress on sending Agent West back to his home universe?"

"Well," Erik Selvig answered as he stood up. "Thanks to the contributions of Mr. Stark, Doctor Banner, and Agent West, we have all the calculations and technology we need to send the boy home. However, we've now hit a roadblock."

"Let me guess," Hand replied, "We still need to borrow the Tesseract from Asgard in order to test your calculations."

"Pretty much," Wally finally spoke up. "Until we can get our hands on that cube, there isn't really anything more we can do to get me home."

"Very well," Agent Hand replied. "I'll contact Commander Hill and ask her to pass along the request to negotiate with Asgard to Director Fury. We'll reconvene once we've received an answer. Are there any questions?" When none present raised their hands, she concluded the meeting with three words. "Good. Meeting Adjourned."

* * *

**Sorry this chapter took so long for me to post. I've just been so stressed from school the last few months and I haven't had the energy to write, but with school done, I'm getting back to work on my fanfiction stories. Sorry this chapter is so short, but after a few months without an update, I wanted to give me readers a new chapter while I work on the next part of the story. **


	14. Negotiations

Chapter 13: Negotiations:  
S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier  
August 23rd, 2012  
6:00 P.M. EST  
Sunset on Midgard, Thor reflected as he and his father Odin stood on the deck of the human organization S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying ship, was almost as good as the one on Asgard. There was something about this world's sun slowly dipping below the horizon that the millennia –old prince found surprisingly comforting. emNevertheless, /emhe thought to himself, emThere must be something serious on Earth going on that Fury would request an audience with the All Father. /emHis musings were interrupted when the man himself approached the two Asgardians, accompanied as usual by armed guards.  
"Father," Thor said to Odin as the two walked up to the director,"I'd like you to meet Sir Nicholas Fury, the leader of the mortal organization called S.H.I.E.L.D."  
"It's an honor to meet you, your majesty," Fury said as he gave a brief bow to show respect to the king of Asgard.  
"And you as well," the king of Asgard replied as he reached out and shook Fury's hand. "Despite his complaints about your methods, my son speaks very highly of you and your organization."  
"Good to hear," Fury responded with a slight glance in Thor's direction. "We have a conference room set up below deck specifically for this meeting."  
"Which reminds me," Odin spoke up as the trio began walking towards the open hatch. "Heimdall could not sense any crises on Midgard, so I'm curious why you've requested this meeting."  
"I'll explain everything when we get inside," was all Fury would say on the matter as the three men made their way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Helicarrier. After a few minutes of walking, they arrived in a conference room along the starboard hull of the ship. emThis is smaller than I was expecting, /emThor thought to himself as he and Odin walked into the brightly lit cabin. After offering the first seat to his father, Thor sat down in one of a small number of chairs placed around a medium – sized rectangular table. Apart from himself, Odin, and Director Fury, the only other occupants in the room were the Man of Iron, Doctor Banner, and a young man with hair so red the prince of Asgard could have sworn he was related to Lady Romanov.  
"This," Fury said to the Asgardian royalty as he gestured towards the young red head, "is Wallace West." Thor noticed the young man winced, possibly because he was one of those Midgardians who were strangely embarrassed of their names. Fury cleared his throat, forcing the warrior prince back to reality. "He's… not from this universe."  
"I don't understand…" Thor began as he looked to the All Father, hoping Odin knew what Fury was talking about. If the look on his face was any indication, he did. Before Thor could ask, his father answered the question for him.  
"For eons the rulers of Asgard have known that ours was not the only reality in existence," Odin began. "There are an infinite number of alternate universes, each with its own version of Earth. However, each universe is wildly different from each other. Beyond the fact that they have a Midgard, there are few, if any similarities between these dimensions, and travel between them is extremely rare, if not impossible."  
"With all due respect, you're excellency," Fury replied. "West managed to achieve it by accident, it seems. The reason we requested this meeting is because we need something from Asgard to send him back to his own universe."  
The Asgardian king's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What exactly do you require?"  
"Our plan to get him home," the man Thor called Tony Stark began, "involves sticking the kid in one of my high – tech suits of armor and blasting the suit with energy, in the hopes that concentrating the energy into one object will warp him back to his own universe. The only problem is that we need to borrow the Tesseract in order to test it."  
"And how can I trust that you to return the Tesseract when this young man has been returned to his own reality?" Odin asked. "And not keep it for yourself?"  
"You'll just have to trust us," Fury replied bluntly with an icy tone in his voice. Odin glared at the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D., but his son thankfully intervened before the two could come to blows over the issue.  
"Father," Thor began, "I have an idea for a compromise." After gazing around the room to make sure he had everyone's attention, he continued. "S.H.I.E.L.D. can borrow the Tesseract, but I shall remain on Midgard to supervise this project of theirs. As long as they use it for its intended purpose of sending Sir West home, I will only observe. But if the Tesseract is misused by S.H.I.E.L.D. in any way, I have the authority to return the cube to Asgard, by force if necessary." After a few minutes of contemplation, Odin finally spoke.  
"My son makes a valid argument," the All Father said. "As such, you may use the Tesseract under the condition that you do so under Thor's terms."  
"It looks like we have an agreement, then," the Director responded as he stood and moved to shake the Asgardian king's hand. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, your Excellency."  
"And you as well," Odin replied as the Asgardians stood to leave. "I will send Thor back with the Tesseract within the next few days."

* * *

**And that's it for this chapter. If you're wondering why Odin believed that Wally is from another universe so quickly, I felt that Odin had been around long enough that he doesn't joke around with stuff like inter-universal travel, so he takes that topic pretty seriously.**


	15. If He Be Worthy

**As I was going over my outline, I realized that I needed a Thor and Wally bonding chapter, so here it is.**

* * *

**Chapter 14: If He Be Worthy:**

Avengers Tower

August 29th, 2012

3:00 A.M. EST

_It looks like it'll take Thor a while to get used to me, _Wally thought to himself as he made walked through the dimly lit corridors of Avengers Tower after getting up to use the restroom. The Nordic deity had returned from Asgard with the Tesseract yesterday and had been quite vocal with his displeasure of the young speedster. _I guess it's understandable the guy's suspicious, _he continued as he entered the still-under-construction common room, _A guy shows up from another dimension and the only way to send him home conveniently happens to be the thing that caused his brother to invade the planet. _Wally understood why Thor was suspicious of him, but he wasn't expecting the demigod to be so vocal about it.

In any case, the young superhero turned his thoughts back to more pressing concerns, such as the fact that, despite the improvements Tony claimed to have made to the tower, he had neglected to add additional bathrooms. As it was, there was only one bathroom every three floors, so it was faster for Wally to go up one floor to use the bathroom in the middle of the night than to go down two. His mental complaints were interrupted when he suddenly tripped and face-planted on the floor of the tower.

"Owww…" he moaned as he picked himself up before turning to see what had tripped him. "Figures," he grumbled as he fixed his eyes on Thor's hammer sitting next of the house. While in reality Thor had simply forgotten about his hammer when he'd gone to bed, his attitude the previous day was enough to convince Wally that he'd left it there on purpose. So the he did what any other hero would do in his situation. He picked up the hammer and marched to the thunder god's bedroom to give the man a piece of his mind, oblivious to the significance of what he'd just done.

He marched into Thor's room and turned on the light switch before he threw the hammer down on the floor next to the bed.

"All right big guy," he snapped as the Norse god groggily sat up in bed. "You can be a jerk to me all you want in front of the rest of the team, but leaving your junk around for me to trip over in the middle of the night is a new low." Thor's mind registered what the man had said, but before he could reply with a snappy comeback, his eyes fell on the hammer at Wally's feet and his nearly popped out of his skull with shock. Admittedly, he'd been suspicious of the boy's intentions from the beginning because of the alleged requirement of the Tesseract to send him home. Any suspicions he'd had about Wally West's intentions were now gone.

"You…. Can wield Mjolnir," he said, still trying to overcome his surprise.

"And that's such a big deal because…" Wally inquired impatiently as he the god of thunder stood up from the bed.

"Only those who are deemed worthy can wield it's power," he said as he reached out and shook Wally's hand. "I'd misjudged you, Wallace West. Please forgive me for my earlier behavior." Wally couldn't help but be impressed. What had started as a harmless accident had resulted in Wally finally gaining Thor's trust. _I guess I can deal with that, _the speedster thought to himself as he shook the Nordic deity's hand.

"Don't worry about it," he said aloud, deciding to bury the hatchet and not cause more drama between the two of them. "I understand why you were a bit suspicious. On that note, that hammer wasn't as light as I expected it to be."

"If it's too heavy, then you lose power on the swing," Thor replied with a grin before the duo launched into a lengthy discussion on wielding Mjolnir, Wally's universe, and Tony Stark's questionable architectural decisions.


	16. Back to School

**Chapter 15:** **Back to School:**

Stanford University

September 15th, 2016

5:00 P.M. PST

Artemis crock sighed as she slumped back in one of the cafeteria chairs on her first day back at school. She was already a semester behind thanks to that undercover mission Nightwing had sent her on, so she didn't want to miss another. _Wally was going to take this semester off, _she remembered, _so that we'd still graduate together. It was such a sweet idea. _She sighed as she thought of all the things that they were going to do together that would never happen now. Her mournful reflection abruptly ended when her friend Samantha walked over to her.

"Hey Artemis," she said. "It's good to have you back. I missed you."

"Thanks, Sam," Artemis replied. "It's good to be back I missed you too. How's your brother doing?"

"Patrick's doing fine," she added. "But I wanted to be the first one to ask you. The latest gossip around campus is that you and Wally broke up. Nobody's seen him since June so we're all wondering: true or false."

"False," the blonde answered with a frown. "We didn't break up. He…. He died." Sam's eyes went wide with shock before softening to comfort her grieving friend.

"I'm so sorry, Artemis," she said as she reached over and placed a comforting hand on the young woman's arm. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Artemis replied as she picked up her bags and stood up from her chair.

"I understand," Samantha said as she stood up and gave her friend a hug. "But if you need someone to talk to, my brother and I are here for you."

"Thanks," the super-heroine responded as she turned to head back to the house she and Wally used to share. "I'll see you around." And with that, Artemis walked out the door.

* * *

Palo Alto

September 15th, 2016

6:30 P.M. PST

When she arrived at their -her- house, she reached into her bag and pulled out the item that no one outside of her and Wally's families had ever seen: the engagement ring she'd found in his dresser a week after he died. She knew when she found it that he would've proposed to her after defeating the Reach MFDs, but since he died before he proposed, she felt there was no point in telling anyone outside of their families.

When she walked into the house, she was far from surprised to find Nightwing reclining on her couch.

"Of course Wally would give you a key," she greeted her old teammate wryly as she tossed her bag into a chair.

"We both know I'd never need one even if he didn't," the nineteen-year-old vigilante replied with a smirk as he stood up and gave his best friend's girlfriend a comforting hug. "So why was I the last one to know that you're pregnant with Wally's child." He didn't need to explain how he'd figured it out. The newspaper and catalog clippings of cribs, diapers, bottles, and other such items lying on the kitchen table were a dead giveaway.

"You haven't called in over three months. Do you even have to ask?" she replied as she walked past him into the kitchen. Before she could throw in another snappy remark, her friend's response stopped her dead in her tracks.

"I found a lead," he told her. No other explanation was required.

"Dick," she replied, "I miss him too. We all do. But he's gone. You need to accept that and move on."

"Artemis, just hear me out," he continued as he followed her into the kitchen. "I had a few scientists I know look at the footage a few times. Wally didn't disintegrate. He just vanishes. One moment he's there, and the next he's gone. No ashes. No trace. This means that there's still a chance he could be alive."

"Just because there wasn't any trace of him doesn't mean that there's anything to find," she countered. "With the amount of energy he'd been hit with, any remains would have been vaporized before they even hit the ground."

"But that's the thing," Dick Grayson added as he stood next to the kitchen table. "If that were true, then his remains would have been visible on camera for at least a fraction of a second before they were vaporized. Wally is still alive." Artemis fixed her teammate with a look that said she wanted to believe he was right but needed more convincing.

"Let's say you're right," she proposed hypothetically. "Where would he be and how would we get him back?"

"I consulted with the same scientists who looked over the video," he answered as he pulled a flash drive out of his pockets and fingered it in his hands. "The two leading theories we've come up with are time travel or warping between dimensions."

"Really?" Artemis retorted sarcastically as he stood up from the table. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"I know it sounds crazy," the vigilante from Bluhaven replied before handing her the flash drive, "but it's our best lead. Everything I have is on this drive. Take a look."

"Only if you bring the rest of the Team in on this," she insisted as she accepted the device that could potentially reunite her with the love of her life. "Nobody gets locked out of the loop on this."

"Alright," he said with a smile as he gave her a hug before slipping out the back window. "We'll find him, Artemis," he added before vanishing into the night. "I promise."

* * *

**Before anyone asks, Samantha will not be important to the overall story. I just wanted to have a scene where Artemis discusses Wally's death with someone outside of the Team, her family, or the Justice League, and decided on having her converse with a friend from college. Let me know if you notice where Samantha and Patrick's names are from. ;)**

**And to clarify if anybody is wondering, I figured the reason that Artemis didn't tell anyone outside of family that Wally had planned to propose was because she figured that since he never actually proposed because of his untimely "death", there was no point in announcing something that now would never happen. **


	17. Test Run

**Sorry about the wait everyone. I've been busy and stressed getting ready for college but here's a new chapter. **

* * *

**Chapter 16: Test Run: **

S.H.I.E.L.D. Research Facility, Location Classified

December 22nd, 2012

12:00 P.M. Time Zone Classified

"All right," Wally called out to the other scientists in the cavernous research facility constructed for the express purpose of testing the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project. "Let's get this test run over with, people." The research team for the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project had been working on their interdimensional teleportation device for months now, and the prototype was finally ready. Wally, Bruce, Tony, and the other scientists had poured five months of blood, sweat, tears, all-nighters, and coffee into ensuring that the project was a success. Finally, they were ready.

The project team immediately set to work preparing cradle designed to funnel the Tesearact's energy into a custom-made Iron Man suit. The suit was built with an exterior covering made of what to one not scientifically inclined would mistake for solar panels. The energy-absorption panels would – in theory – absorb the power and radiation of the cube and from there would activate a program modelled with input from Thor that would create an invisible rift in the universe that the armor would fall through. It seemed like a solid idea in theory, but this test would determine how accurate it would be.

"Energy absorption panels are a go," Tony called out from a computer screen near the suit.

"Jump Accuracy Assessment Program is up and running," Bruce called out from the opposite side of the platform the stuit stood on. The JAAP, as Tony called it, was a program he and Wally had developed to ensure that if their idea worked, they sent the Iron Man suit to the correct universe. Once the suit reached the new universe, the JAAP would access the internet and begin checking all news websites to confirm that it had arrived in Wally's universe based on the existence of the Justice League, The Team, and the Reach Invasion that ended six months ago.

"Gamma Conduits are ready," Dr. Selvig called out from the cradle holding the Tesseract. For the next five minutes the research team checked and double-checked every program and piece of equipment while Thor watched, waiting to intervene if anything went wrong. Once the last re-check had been completed, Wally called out to the group.

"Alright people," he shouted. "Launch in five.

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

"Fire."

With that, a beam of energy launched out from the cube and was funneled straight towards the armor. After five minutes of the armor absorbing the Teseract's power, the room exploded in a blinding flash.

When the light dimmed and everyone could see again, the suit had vanished, and the platform on which it stood was replaced by a smoking crater. The Tesearct remained in its cradle, but the computers that contained all of the software were completely fried. The project team had been flung against the far wall, and even Thor was dazed by what had happened. An uneasy silence hung over the room as technicians and lab assistants slowly regained consciousness and everyone pondered the unspoken question: had the armor actually made it through the rift? Or had it just disintegrated in the explosion.

After what felt like hours it was Wally who finally broke the silence.

"Is anyone going to say what we're all thinking? Or should I do it?"

"There's only one way to know if it worked," Tony spoke up as he climbed shakily to his feet. "I figured we'd end up facing this dilemma, so I adjusted our calculations so we would give the suit twice as much juice as it needed."

"And you nearly killed us all, Stark!" Thor shouted as he walked over to attempt to strangle the billionaire with his bare hands.

"Calm down, Point Break," Tony fired back as he helped Bruce to his feet. "I designed the suit to store the surplus energy and save it for the return voyage. It'll land in whatever universe it ends up in, spend the next 12 hours scanning to confirm it's Banana Split's universe, and then use the remaining energy to warp home."

Satisfied with the man's explanation, Thor calmed down and went to help the other scientists up. He chuckled to himself as he heard Wally loudly complain that he hated Tony's nickname for him. He would wait on Earth a few more days to see if this plan of theirs worked, then return to Asgard with the Teseract. _With any luck, _he thought to himself, _it will work, and Sir West can be reunited with his love._

* * *

The Bat-Cave

December 22th, 2016

3:00 P.M.

Richard Grayson was dimly aware of the blanket draped over him – obviously by Alfred – as he lifted his head off the central computer of the Batcave to find an alart flashing on the screen. Noticing the mug of coffee that either Alfred or Batman had left for him, he reached over and grabbed the mug with one hand while typing keys on the computer to study the alert with the other. As he took a sip of the coffee, he immediately spat it out in shock. He stared at the screen in shock as he read through the report on the computer.

The Batcave's sensors had detected a massive energy surge in upstate New York. The energy signature didn't match that of a Boom Tube, Fate or Klarion's portals, or any other energy source or form of teleportation. _Which leaves two possibilities, _he thought to himself as he stood up from his chair and headed for the garage. _Either it's something we haven't encountered before, or it's not from this universe. _

While some would find the idea that an unidentifiable energy source could possibly hail from beyond the universe to be a bit of a stretch, the young man's research into the possibility that his deceased best friend was teleported into a completely different reality had convinced him to take no chances. Besides, the League had experienced trouble with visitors from other dimensions before, so it wasn't completely unheard of. _If it's something from another universe, _he thought, _maybe we can use it to figure out how to get Wally back. _Nightwing quickly dialed Artemis' cell phone as he raced out of the Batcave on a morocycle, heading for the mysterious energy surge. Even if it wasn't a clue to bringing Wally back, he still couldn't let the Light get their hands on whatever the source was.

* * *

**Now is where the ball gets rolling. I've had to tweak the dates based on the timeline of Iron Man 3. According to the timeline information I've found, there's a two day gap between Tony challenging the Mandarin on TV and the attack on his mansion. This chapter takes place the day before the attack. **


	18. Revelations

**Sorry this chapter is so short but I wanted to have this be a separate chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter 17: Revelations:**

New Hampshire

December 22th, 2016

11: 45 P.M. EST

Nightwing breathed a sigh of relief as he shut the door of his safe house, leaving him free to examine his find in peace. After sending a quick text to Artemis asking her to meet him here, he turned to examine the cause of the energy surge. It appeared to be some kind of android, but it didn't bear any of the traditional design quirks associated with either T. O. Morrow or Professor Ivo. After examining the automaton's exterior and finding what appeared to be a USB port, he placed his laptop on the table and plugged in a cord that connected it to the machine. With the connection in place, he immediately began downloading and copying its memory and technical specifications.

_What is "Stark Industries"? _he thought to himself as he read the logo in the background of the files. After doing a quick internet search and finding nothing, his speculation was interrupted by a knock at the door. He tensed up, preparing for a fight.

"Dick," a woman's voice called out. "It's me." The twenty-year old vigilante relaxed when he recognized the voice. "Thanks for granting me access before I got here by the way," Artemis added sarcastically after her former teammate let her into the room. "So this is why you called me here?" the noticeably pregnant former superhero asked after seeing the humanoid hunk of metal lying on the table, not even bothering to keep the hurt out of her voice. "A robot that set off an energy spike in the middle of nowhere is somehow proof that Wally's alive?"

"I know it seems like a stretch," the young man answered as he unplugged his laptop from the machine. "But the energy surge doesn't match any energy source we know of, terrestrial or not. If we can confirm that it came from another dimension and figure out how to replicate it's method of interdimensional travel…"

"We can start looking for Wally," Artemis finished as she followed her companion's train of thought. She took a look at the screen an her eyes widened in alarm. "Dick! Your laptop." He turned to see various windows popping up on his computer, and he quickly recognized it for what it was. _That think must have had a virus hidden inside it's files in case anyone tried to download or copy them, _he thought as he raced to the table.

The duo quickly panicked as Nightwing scrambled to thwart the device's attempts to infect his computer. But the device was thwarting him at every turn. _Whoever built this thing were obviously expecting someone to try and hack into it, _he realized. _And they're good, _he acknowledged. _They weren't just expecting anyone to hack into it, they were expecting someone with my level of expertise. _He slammed his fist on the table in frustration as his computer opened multiple internet browser windows of its own accord. He was about to throw an explosive Batarang at it when he noticed what the virus in the machine was entering in the search boxes. _Why would a virus made by a company that doesn't exist be trying to Google search the Justice League and the Reach invasion? _He thought. _Unless… _He was about to ask Artemis what she thought of his suspicious when a video file opened up from the files he'd downloaded from the robot.

"Destination Confirmed," a robotic voice said in a British accent. "Location identified as target universe. Beginning Message." Dick and Artemis froze in shock.

"Hey guys!" Wally's voice shouted cheerfully as it boomed from the speakers on Dick's laptop. "If you're watching this then Project Oprheus made its way to the right dimension. So there's good news and some not-so good news. The good news is I'm not dead. All that energy from the Reach MFD tore open a hole in reality and I fell through into a completely different universe. The not-so-good news is that it'll take me a while to get home." Wally's girlfriend and best friend watched his message with their undivided attention. Both of them drank in Wally's explanation of both his current situation and the suit of armor that would be used to bring him home. When the video was over, Artemis turned to Dick.

"He's alive," she said as she began crying tears of happiness. Even though she'd told her old friend she believed that Wally was still alive, a small part of her still doubted and believed that Dick's frantic search was nothing more than a guilt-driven wild goose chase. That doubt had been burned out of existence when she heard her boyfriend's message and saw his face on the screen with her own eyes. _He's alive, _she repeated in her head. _He's alive and he's trying to find a way back. _

"We'll take it back to the Watchtower and see if we can figure out how it managed to get to our universe," Nightwing said as he stood up and Gestured for Artemis to help him carry it outside. As they dragged what they now knew was a battle suit towards the door, they heard the voice of the British accented person Wally had referred to as Jarvis through speakers they assumed were located in the suit's head.

"Layover time as expired. Preparing to warp to home dimension in ten. Nine." Not even bothering to look at each other, Dick and Artemis dropped the suit on the floor and scrambled to pry it open. The chest quickly opened up revealing extendable armor plating that quickly enveloped the two off-duty superheroes in a small metal cocoon that was still large enough to fit the two of them.

Neither of them particularly cared about the ramifications of their sudden and (to the rest of the world) inexplicable departure from this universe, but both were driven to follow the trail that Wally had left for them. Artemis was driven by the desire to be with Wally again, Dick knew that being able to study this suit would help get Wally home faster, and he couldn't examine it if it was in a completely different universe, and both knew that Wally and these "Avengers" had built this thing to protect a human being from the energy the suit used to travel between universes.

When the countdown reached zero, the suit and its two occupants vanished from this universe in a blinding flash of blue light, leaving only the destroyed wreckage of the single-story safe house in their wake.

* * *

**Yes, it was a bit hasty for them to just race over to the Marvel Universe, and that will be addressed in later chapters. And before anyone asks me about how it will effect Artemis with her being pregnant and all, it won't. Tony tends to think ahead, so since the suit is supposed to protect Wally from the Tesseract's energy, he'd naturally make sure the prototype had thick enough plating to actually do that, figuring that someone was bound to try and climb inside the suit before it warped back. A lot of the research with the project designs was largely done off-screen because it didn't really do anything for the story. **


	19. Rose Hill

**Sorry we have another short chapter. It just ended up being shorter than I expected it to be. **

**Chapter 18: Rose Hill: **

Avengers Tower

December 23th, 2012

1:00 A.M. EST

Wally West was exhausted. He was grateful for the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. had offered him a job instead of sticking him under a microscope, but he was still homesick. The job paid well and was kind of fun in all honesty, but until the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. suit came back no further progress could be made on the inter-universal teleportation front. He missed his family and all his friends both in college and on the Team. But most of all, he missed Artemis. What hurt him most of all was the fact that he had no way of knowing if the suit had even gone to the right universe, and if it did, whether the League had even found it so they could listen to his message. The longer it took for him to get home, the quicker everybody would move on, and the more things would change by the time he got back.

He opened the door to his suite in the tower, hung up his S.H.I.E.L.D. jacket, and plopped himself on the couch. He took one look at the video camera sitting on the coffee table, and picked it up. With a hopeful smile, he turned the camera towards his face and recorded a new message to put in the next suit.

"Hey everybody, it's me again. It's almost Christmas over here and I haven't made any more progress on getting home, but at least I'm still alive. Hopefully you guys will see this by the time I get back. Try not to have too much fun without me. To Nightwing and the rest of the team, I miss you guys. And Artemis, I love you. I always will."

He turned off the camera and was about to go upload the video to the computer for Tony to send when he got back from Mailbu. Iron Man had been in California for the past few weeks handling business minutia at Stark Industries, so he had no clue when he'd be able to send this video. Wally had been running across the country examining the bomb sites of the latest Mandarin attacks for any trace of a clue to the Mandarin's identity or his methods. Was it too much to want there to be no terrorist attacks or meta-human (or gifteds as they were called here) appearances for one day so he could rest? The instant he got off the couch, his cell phone beeped indicating an incoming text message. He picked up the phone to find a text from Agent Romanov waiting for him.

**Turn on the TV**, it read. **Now.**

Grumbling, Wally picked up the remote and turned on the TV, only for his jaw to drop in shock at the scene before him. He quickly turned up the volume as fast as the remote would register his super-speed clicking.

"These images are coming to you live from the scene of Tony Stark's Malibu Mansion, which has just been destroyed by the terrorist known as the Mandarin, after Stark challenged the madman to single combat on live television only a few hours ago. Stark Industries CEO Virginia Potts is confirmed to have survived the attack, but the billionaire himself remains missing in action ever since the remains of the house collapsed into the ocean. Since Mr. Stark was wearing the Iron Man suit when the building collapsed, the Coast Guard has sent divers down to search the wreckage of the house, but until they find the body, Tony Stark is being consider missing.

Wally turned off the TV in shock. Just as he finished processing everything that had happened, his phone rang.

"West," he responded when he answered the phone.

"We need you to come in to the Helicarrier," Commander Hill replied bluntly. "We're at code six."

"Who else is being called in?" Wally asked as he grabbed his jacked and made his way towards the door.

"Barton, Rogers, and Romanov," Hill replied. "Basically, every Avenger we can get in touch with on short notice. They're going to be handling the real work of stopping the Mandarin though. You have another assignment."

"Really Hill?" Wall groaned as he stood in the elevator heading down to the lobby. "I know we're trying to keep the Council from finding out about my powers but that doesn't mean you have to pull me off helping take down the bad guys."

"Agent West," Maria Hill replied warningly. "We've detected another energy spike. Readings are consistent with your arrival in this universe and we started tracking one of Starks suits at the same time. All evidence points towards the successful return of the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project."

"So you're sending me to confirm that it is the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. prototype?" Wally inquired as he stepped out of the elevator and headed for the Tower's main entrance.

"Exactly," Hill confirmed. "And if you finish quickly enough I'll tell the Avengers to save some bad guys for you."

"Yes ma'am," Wally replied enthusiastically before he hung up and took off running for the agency's New York base so he could take a Quinjet up to the Hellicarrier. He was thrilled for there to finally be some progress getting home. Hopefully once the Mandarin had been defeated, he'd be able to finish work on the project and go home to reunite with the girl of his dreams.

* * *

Watchtower

December 23th, 2016

1:00 A.M.

"KEEP LOOKING!" Batman roared. Everyone in the surrounding vicinity flinched in fear. Batman _never _shouted. Even when he was confronting his parents' killer, he never raised his voice. But when his protege, his son, had gone missing, heaven help those responsible. To the rest of the world, it looked like a bombing, but everyone in the Justice League and on the Team knew that there was more to the explosion at the safe-house than that. Which was why Bumblebee, Miss Martian, Atom, Martian Manhunter, and Robin were currently combing over the wreckage of the building. They'd been going over the site for hours, but the search team would rather continue to search until dawn than face an angry, desperate, grieving Batman. An hour later, Bumblebee's voice called out over the comms.

"I found something," she said. "I think it's Nightwing's laptop."

"Bring it back to the Watchtower," Batman instructed harshly. No one commented on his uncharacteristic behavior, because they understood what he was feeling right now.

"I found a security camera," Robin added. "It's a little banged up but I should be able to recover the footage from before the explosion."

"Good," Batman replied bluntly. "Maybe we can finally get some answers. Robin, Bumblebee, return to the Watchtower with your findings. Miss Martian, Manhunter, continue sweeping for psychic residue until we can use the surveillance equipment to determine the cause of the explosion." A chorus of agreements rose over the comms as Batman swept out of the room towards the Watchtower's hidden liquor supply. He hadn't had an alcoholic beverage since the last Wayne charity function a few months ago, but after everything that's happened, he needed a drink.

**Sorry if it seems a little OOC for Batman to drink but I figured 1) he's freaked out about potentially loosing his first son (the father/son dynamic between Bruce and Dick is one of the things I like about this show), and 2) I figured Green Arrow would keep a supply of alcoholic beverages aboard the Watchtower for special occasions. **


	20. False Hope

**Hello, dear readers. I'm back! I apologize for my lengthy absence, but I had an ongoing Kingdom Hearts story that I wanted to finish by the time my winter break ended, so I was focusing entirely on that so I could get it done. Now that it's finished, I'm devoting all my fanfiction writing time to this story. Enjoy!**

* * *

**Chapter 19: False Hope:**

New Hampshire

December 19, 2012

2:00 A.M. EST

Nearly an hour later, Wally slowed to normal human speeds as he reached the outskirts of a small New Hampshire town near where the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Prototype had been detected. After checking his position in relation to the coordinates Commander Hill had provided, he walked off in search of the suit. After a few minutes, he found himself looking at a crater on the edge of town. Noticing that there was an airfield a few yards away, he walked over to the security guard hut at the edge of the perimeter fence to look at the security camera footage just as a private jet took off into the sky.

One flash of his S.H.I.E.L.D. badge and a quick cover story later, the security guard let Wally inside the small shack containing the monitors for the airfield's meager few security cameras. At the Speedster's instruction, the guard rewound the footage back to around an hour and a half ago, the time when the energy surge had first been detected. His initial confusion at why the suit seemed to have swollen in size died as his breath caught in his throat. Tears welled up in his eyes as he watched the metal cocoon in the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. suit's abdomen open up to reveal his best friend dick, and a visibly pregnant Artemis.

A million questions raced through his mind as he watched his two friends take in their surroundings. How did they get inside the suit? Where were they now? Did they get together after he'd died? Was he going to be a father? One of those questions was answered when two black vans pulled up to the edge of the crater half an hour later. Under normal circumstances, the goons attempting to abduct the two vigilantes from Gotham wouldn't have stood a chance, but Artemis was in no condition to fight, and was quickly captured, with Nightwing being forced to stand down and turn himself in to prevent these henchmen from hurting her.

Wally resisted the urge to blurt out all of his questions at once as the security guard changed the display to another camera as Nightwing and Artemis were taken out of view of the first one while some of the bad guys stayed behind to retrieve the suit. The next view of the camera showed the men in suits, whoever they were, dragging his friends towards the plane. _The same plane that just took off when I got here, _Wally realized. Sure enough, the security cameras showed the plane taking off just as Wally arrived on the scene, with Nightwing, Artemis, and the suit on board.

When the security guard saw the fire in the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's eyes, the man quickly put two and two together. After tying the guard to his chair at supersonic speeds, Wally interrogated the man as to the plane's destination. At first, the guard refused to tell him anything, but a few carefully worded threats mixed with a lucrative offer of leniency, the man confessed that he didn't know very much. Just that the plane belonged to a research think tank called Advanced Ideas in Mechanics, and that one of the men carrying the suit had mentioned taking their captives to a compound in Miami.

With the information in hand, Wally knocked the man unconscious with a single punch before calling Hill and relaying his discovery. After downloading the footage to his high tech S.H.I.E.L.D. phone and sending it to the Helicarrier for analysis, Commander Hill informed him that the plane was already three quarters of the way to Miami by now. Even if Wally ran at his top speed, he wouldn't make it to Miami before it landed.

Nevertheless, Wally refused to be deterred. After Hill promised to have specialitsts on standby in Miami to track these men from AIM when the plane landed. Given the reveal that the company appeared to be involved in criminal activity, S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols dictated that the agents gather as much intel as they could in order to neutralize the threat in one strike. Wally didn't want to risk putting his girlfriend and best friend's lives at risk, but he wasn't in the mood to argue as he raced out of the shack and ran south as fast as his legs could carry him.

* * *

A.I.M. Private Jet

December 19, 2012

4:00 A.M. EST

Artemis glanced nervously at Nightwing as the plane shook from the turbulence caused by their abnormally high flying speeds. Now that they'd had the chance to come down from their surprise and excitement that Wally was alive, if they weren't in hand cuffs at the moment, they'd be smacking themselves over how hasty their decision had been. They could have told everyone what had happened and gotten the help of the League and Star Labs to work on the inter-universal teleportation technology from their end and bring Wally home.

Now, they were stranded in another universe, captured by what appeared to be this universe's equivalent of LexCorp. They had no way to contact Wally and their friends and faily back home most likely thought that they were either dead or off the grid on some deep cover mission. Although normally taking out these henchmen wouldn't be a problem, the fact that they all carried guns and Artemis wasn't in any condition to fight due to her pregnancy meant that the two of them couldn't do anything but wait for the opportunity to escape.

* * *

**I know, that cliffhanger was evil of me. After months of waiting for a new chapter, I can assure you that the next one will be up by Sunday. Virtual brownie points to those who successfully guess which agents are being dispatched to help with the rescue mission. I also went back and edited the last 3 chapters due to timeline inconsistencies with the events of Iron Man 3. Basically according to the information I dug up regarding the timeline, there's a two day period between Tony challenging the Mandarin on live TV and the attack on his mansion. Originally, the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project test was going to be a few days before the challenge, but due to several inconsistencies I noticed when looking back, it's been moved up to the morning before the attack, with Tony using his own Iron Man suit to fly back to his mansion a few hours before the helicopters arrive, because it's evening when that whole thing happens. **


	21. Obvious Reasons

**Chapter 20: Obvious Reasons:**

The Watchtower

December 23, 2016

6:30 A.M. UST

"What have you found?" Batman demanded as he looked around the Watchtower's meeting room at the assembled heroes. Everyone who'd been part of the investigation into the explosion at Nightwing's safe house in New Hampshire was seated around the table. On one side, Robin responded by playing the footage recovered from the safe house's internal security cameras. The damage to the camera was too severe for Tim Drake to access the audio, but they were able to get a good look at Dick Grayson hauling what appeared to be an android of unknown make inside the small building.

"Apparently he plugged it into his laptop to try and access its memory files," Tim explained as a running commentary on the footage. "A little while later, Artemis shows up. They talk for a bit, Nightwing types in something on his computer, they look at something, possibly a video from the android's memory on the laptop. Then they must have heard something from either the android or the laptop, because then he and Artemis start forcing open it's chest panel, which expands to encase them in some kind of cocoon before apparently self-destructing.

"This doesn't make any sense," Miss Martian spoke up. "I know they were both upset about Wally's death but I don't think either of them were truly suicidal about it. Especially not Artemis. That robot must have some sort of teleportation mechanism and Nightwing and Artemis tried to disable its capabilities before it could leave, only for it to take them with it.

"But where did it take them?" Batman asked angrily as he looked around the room, his hope that his son was still alive evident despite his harsh demeanor.

"I was hoping that whatever was on this laptop could explain that," Bumblebee explained as she pulled up the files recovered from Nightwing's computer. Aside from a few internet articles regarding the Justice League and the Reach invasion, the most prominent thing recovered from Richard Grayson's laptop was a single video file. "I thought you'd want to be the first one to look at it," she explained to Batman as she passed the holographic keyboard over to him.

With a grateful nod, Batman pressed play. Everyone's shock was evident when the face of a long dead comrade appeared on the screen. Despite their surprise, everyone listened intently to the same video Nightwing and Artemis had watched before their disappearance. Understanding dawned on the gathered heroes as Wally explained the purpose of the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project. Everyone looked at each other when they realized what had occurred in that safe house.

"So this suit was designed by Wally alongside these "Avengers" to send him back to our dimension," Martian Manhunter summarized. "The suit most likely had a time limit before returning to its home dimension. Nightwing and Artemis realized this, and attempted to open the suit so they could bring Wally back themselves."

"But how do we know for certain that it really _is _Kid Flash?" Batman retorted, addressing the elephant in the room. "This could be a trap by The Light for all we or they know, and they walked right into it."

"We can try scanning for similar energy signatures to that suit from the watchtower," Atom suggested. Everyone quickly agreed, and Batman swept out of the room towards the space station's main command room. Now that his knew Richard was still alive, he was determined to take the lead on finding him himself.

* * *

Miami, Florida

December 23, 2012

6:30 A.M. EST

Wally slowed to normal human running speeds as he reached the city limits of Miami before contacting the Specialist sent to observe the men from AIM. Acording to Commander Hill, he was second only to Agent Romanov in martial arts. The man in question answered the phone after only one ring.

"Agent Ward," the man introduced himself as he answered the phone.

"Agent West," Wally reciprocated the introduction before Ward briefed him on what he'd learned from examining A.I.M.'s compound. The mansion was heavily guarded, the hostages were being kept in a room with a skylight… Pretty much like every other hostage rescue The Team had ever done. Only this time, Wally reflected, instead of a group of teenaged superheroes swooping in to save the day, it was a team of international secret agents storming the compound to break up a criminal operation.

"A team of S.T.R.I.K.E. commandoes will storm the basement while you and I sneak in the back," Ward explained as the two young men briskly headed for their entry point in the room where the hostages, where Dick and Artemis, were being restrained. Anger bubbled up in Wally's mind as he looked through the slanted glass roof panels of the room to see his girlfriend and his best friend tied up in chairs, with the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. suit on a table behind them. A tall man in a white lab coat was telling the two superheroes that if they wouldn't cooperate, he would be forced to rely on extreme measures, before going on to explain about a medicinal drug called Extremis that helped people who'd lost their limbs regrow them.

"Unfortunately," the man in the lab coat explained, "The formula for Extremis is unstable, and those injected with it eventually explode." Wally saw red as he realized what the man was preparing to do. He refused to let them do that to Artemis. To her unborn child. As the scientist began filling a syringe with the explosive serum, the former Kid Flash turned to Ward.

"I'm going in," he said bluntly as he started to prepare a superhumanly fast running jump through the window.

"Not yet," Ward replied, annoyingly calm despite the redhead's inner fury that these men from A.I.M. would dare harm the girl of his dreams. "The S.T.R.I.K.E. team will breach the perimeter any minute. If we want to save the hostages, we have to wait until the guards are distracted by the gunfire and extract the serum from their veins before they combust." _That'll take too long, _Wally protested mentally, knowing that the bland specialist would just calmly say that had to follow protocol.

"Let's find out how the serum affects pregnancy, shall we?" the scientist asked rhetorically as he advanced on Artemis with murderous intent. Ward was silently counting down the seconds until the S.T.R.I.K.E. commandoes attacked the compound. Wally refused to leave his best friend and girlfriend's fates in the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol as he eyed the other agent's gun in a millisecond. Although he didn't want to kill anyone (and the Justice League did have a strict no-kill policy in regards to its members, and those of the Team), now his only choice was either kill the scientist and guards in the room to save his friends, or not kill them and watch Artemis and her child, who may or may not be his future son or daughter, die in a fiery explosion. The scientist was only a foot from Artemis and was seconds away from plunging the Extremis-filled syringe into her arm when a gunshot rang out and glass shattered.

* * *

**Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans all recognize Agent Ward, and are probably wondering what that will mean for Wally and Artemis. To you, I say, I do have sequels to this story planned. (laughs evilly in the background) I know that cliffhanger was a bit suspenseful, but you can guess what happens next ladies and gentlemen. Next chapter will be up in a few days, so bring your tissues. **


	22. Air Force One

**Wow I ended up writing this chapter a whole lot faster than I expected to. Anyway, enjoy! SPITFIRE REUNION AT LAST!**

* * *

**Chapter 21: Air Force One:**

Miami Florida

December 23rd, 2012

7:00 A.M.

Artemis panted heavily as the man with the syringe crumpled to the ground. She was alive. Her baby was safe. For now at least. For a moment the guards just stood there in complete shock while the scientist tried to stop the bleeding from the bullet wound in his shoulder. Before anyone could react, a small object flew through the window and slammed into one of the guard's heads. As the guard collapsed on the ground, the windows behind them shattered. Artemis strained to look behind her as two figures in dark clothing leapt through the skylight in the roof and landed on the floor.

A few feet away from her, Nightwing tensed as one of the figures charged at the remaining guards while out of the corner of her eyes, the other figure raced up behind her and started untying her bonds. Before she could ask who their apparent rescuers were, a familiar voice whispered in her ears. One she was afraid she might never hear again, fearing that the video had been a hoax.

"Hey beautiful," Wally greeted as he finished untying her bonds. "Long time no see." Tears of joy walled up in her eyes as he finished untying her bonds, and once she was free from her restraints she immediately stood up and kissed him.

"I missed you," she said happily amid the sound of gunfire as the other man picked up the gun Wally had thrown through the window and started shooting the remaining guard with pinpoint accuracy, then punched in in the shoulder. "I so want to kiss you right now," she said, her joy evident despite her mock angry tone. "Or maybe kill you for putting me through all this"

"Hold that thought, babe," he replied knowingly. "You can decide later, when we're alone." Taking a brief pause from his reunion with his girlfriend, Wally zipped over and untied Nightwing. He and Artemis quickly tackled Artemis in a group hug. But before they could address the elephant in the room (namely whether or not Wally was going to be a dad or if Nightwing and Artemis had gotten together after his death), Agent Ward just had to butt in and ruin the moment.

"If you're all done having a big group hug," the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent interrupted, "there's still a lot of goons between us and out." Wally reluctantly agreed, and so the group hug broke up as the three heroes started pushing the cart in the corner with the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. suit out of the room. Ward initially protested, until Wally gave him the cover story that it was part of a collaboration experiment between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony Stark, and was classified at level 10 security clearance. That silenced all complaints from the cardboard cutout agent (as Wally was mentally referring to the man in his head).

The cart was surprisingly easy to move, enough that only one person was needed to push it down the hallways. So Ward took point, leading the group through the hallways of A.I.M.'s compound while Nightwing pushed the cart. Artemis walked along behind him, while Wally brought up the rear, keeping an eye out for any other guards in the hallways behind them while putting his Kevlar-laced jacket between Artemis and any remaining henchmen. Eventually, they emerged onto the main courtyard of the villa to find a group of heavily armed men securing the area.

To Artemis and Dick's surprise, these men were apparently on the side of the good guys, along with a man they referred to as Colonel Rhodes saying that the people form A.I.M. had stolen his suit and were going after the president. Before anybody could say anything further, a man in a suit of armor almost identical to the one that had brought them to this universe came out of the building, pulling up its face plate to reveal a man inside. _So this is 'Stark', _Nightwing mused to himself as the armored man started arguing with the soldiers about what to do before he looked over and noticed them.

"Banana Split!" he shouted as he walked over and shook hands with Wally. Artemis couldn't help but laugh at the nickname.

"I told you not to call me that, Tony," Wally retorted before asking Tony what was going on. Apparently the terrorist attacks of a supervillain called the Mandarin were being used as a cover story to hide the flaws of the Extremis serum that had almost been used on Artemis. She and Nightwing were having a hard time following everything, but Wally mouthed that he would explain when the soldiers weren't around. Tony went on to explain that his girlfriend Pepper had been captured by Aldritch Killian, the man behind the plot, and had stolen Rhodey's armored suit to abduct the president.

With everyone caught up, Tony led the three younger super heroes, and Rhodey over to a speedboat docked on the edge of the property. Ignoring the protests of the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, they took off into the ocean, heading for an old oil tanker called the Norco that Killian was apparently using as a base while Tony used his neural link with his armor to send his suit up to Air Force One to rescue its passengers and stop the abduction attempt. While Rhodey drove the boat, Wally finally had the chance to breathe, tearfully reunite with his girlfriend and surrogate brother, and finally explain just what was going on.

* * *

**For the purposes of keeping the plot moving, Tony's escapades in Rose Hill, Tenessee have been condensed into one night since 1) that's how I thought it happened in the movie the first time I saw it, and 2) I need to keep the plot moving along. Anyway, now that everyone's together, the action is about to heat up!**


	23. Catching Up

**For those protesting about Wally killing last chapter, I toyed with the idea when planning this story, but ultimately decided not to. I planned on keeping it vague anyway, which is why there was nothing explicitly saying that Wally was the one who pulled the trigger. I know given Wally's attitude 2 chapters ago, it seems like it was him, and I intentionally wrote it to be vague about who did the killing, intending to cast doubt on whether or not Wally did kill the guy before revealing the this chapter. Anyway, back to the story, prepare yourselves for more reunion feels.**

* * *

**Chapter 22: Catching Up:**

Atlantic Ocean

December 23rd, 2012

8:00 A.M. EST

Wally breathed a sigh of relief. Grant Ward had proved to be as good as they said when it came to marksmanship. He'd considered pulling the trigger himself, but deep down he didn't think he'd have been able to kill anyone if he'd tried. Thankfully, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had ultimately proven to have insanely good reflexes, saving the lives of Wally's closes friends in the process. While Tony was down in the cabin remotely piloting his suit up to air force one, and Rhodey on the top deck of the small boat steering towards the Norco, the three superheroes finally got the chance to catch up on each other's lives.

After addressing one of the two elephants in the boat and confirming that he had not in fact killed the scientist or the guard, Wally finally gave Dick and Artemis the run down on the whole situation. S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, the Mandarin, A.I.M., all of it. They all chuckled at his description of S.H.I.E.L.D. as "the FBI, CIA, NSA, The Team, and a little bit of James Bond thrown into a blender." But his calling Tony Stark Green Arrow with an artificial version of Blue Beetle's armor and Batman's wealth got the most laughs out of all of them. Eventually the laughter died down, however, when it came time to address the second elephant on the boat.

"So…" Wally began, nervously scratching the back of his head. He was a little unsure of how to say what he was thinking without sounding insensitive, but he didn't really have many ideas. "Did you guys… get together… after I…" He didn't even get a chance to finish the sentence.

"Wally, really?" Artemis interrupted. "Do you really think I'd be over your 'death' in only six months?"

"Point taken," he conceded sheepishly as he blushed profusely. "And the baby…"

"You're going to be a father, Baywatch," she replied as she leaned over and kissed him. "And you're going to be great at it." They sat in silence for a few minutes, just basking in the fact that they were together again.

"So I take it that you couldn't explain everything to us when the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were around because only a limited number are supposed to know that you're from another universe and us having that conversation would have been a big giveaway?" Nightwing asked rhetorically. He smiled trollingly as Wally glared at him for running the moment between the two of them.

"Exactly," Wally answered after Dick finished laughing. "The council in charge of running S.H.I.E.L.D. overreacts to a lot of things so Director Fury decided that it would be better to keep universe travel off their radar." He gestured toward the armor suit that Dick and Artemis had come through in. "Only a select few are cleared to know my past or about the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Project."

"Fitting name," Nightwing replied with a smile, putting the pieces together. "Hopefully we'll get a chance to meet these 'Avengers' later, once this is all over." Artemis agreed, and Wally promised to introduce everyone once they'd saved the world (or at least the country) for what was probably the millionth time. Eventually, Rhodey came down and pulled Tony out of the cabin for further news. But despite his rescue of the surviving staff aboard Air Force One, Killian's minions had already abducted the president.

* * *

**I know this chapter is a little short, but I wanted a nice fluffy bit of Wally reuniting with his girlfriend and best friend before the final battle. Anyway, anyone worried about Wally killing people can rest easy. After comments about it being OOC after the previous chapter, I ultimately realized that Ward would be the better option for pulling the trigger. Which ultimately makes sense considering his background (people who have seen Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. know what I'm talking about ;))**


	24. Iron Legion

**I apologize if the frequent updates yesterday ended up spamming some readers' inboxes. The rapid-fire updating wasn't intentional. I just had a lot of free time on my hands and nothing else to do except work on my fanfics, so I ended up writing the chapters much faster than I expected to. Since I'm a lot busier today than I was yesterday, the updates won't be coming so frequently.**

* * *

**Chapter 23: Iron Legion:**

Norco Oil Tanker

December 23rd, 2012

9:00 A.M. EST

"Don't die out there," Artemis whispered to Wally as she gave him one last kiss before he and the others leapt out of the Quinjet to rescue the president. After Tony delivered the news of the president's abduction, Wally had immediately contacted Maria Hill, the deputy director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and brought her up to speed on the situation. Once informed of the president's abduction, her response was to send a "Quinjet" full of the other members of the Avengers to pick them up for the battle.

Introductions had been made along the way, and now they were all prepared to dive into battle. Except Artemis. Although she wanted to help save the day as much as the rest of the team, she was still six months pregnant after all. She wasn't exactly in condition to fight, and bringing her and Wally's unborn son or daughter within five feet of those Extremis nut jobs would be reckless and irresponsible. So she sat this fight out while the rest of the group went out to fight.

"Don't worry, babe," Wally replied after one final hug. "I'm coming back this time. I promise." And with that, he took a running jump off the open ramp of the Quinjet and plunged through the air. Nightwing jumped out behind him as they raced down towards the ship yard below. A few thousand feet beneath them, Captain America dove into the water and started swimming for the dock. Further up, Tony, Rhodes, Barton, and Romanov deployed their parachutes and gently landed on one of the upper walkways.

He and Nightwing opened their chutes and glided over to where Tony and the others were standing just as Hawkeye and Black Widow stalked off to start the shootout with Killian's minions. While he and Nightwing landed and removed their parachutes, he overheard Colonel Rhodes mention that he'd "kill for some armor right now."

"You're right," Stark commented. "We need back up." When "Iron Patriot" added that they need a bunch, the billionaire gestured at the horizon with his head. As the other three heroes looked where he was nodding, a small speck appeared in the morning sky appearing to grow in size as the object flew rapidly towards their location.

"Is that…?" Kid Flash began, thinking that the Mark 42 suit had returned.

"Yeah," Iron Man replied. Then the approaching dot broke off into two. The speedster's eyes widened, along with his friend's, as he realized what was happening. _Tony's been working on multiple different suits, _he thought to himself as the dots divided further into even more. _So he's calling all of them in at once!_

"And are those…?" Iron Patriot added.

"Yep," Stark answered as all forty-one suits of the Iron Legion braked and hovered in midair around the perimeter of the docks. "Merry Christmas, buddies," he added as he patted Rhodes on the back. As the Extremis-infused terrorists gazed up at the mechanical army in a mixture of shock and awe, Stark ordered Jarvis to target all extremis heat signatures and disable with extreme prejudice.

"Yes sir," the familiar British accent of the loveable A.I. boomed from forty-one sets of speakers. And with a wave of Stark's arms, the battle began. As the suits flew around the harbor attacking every Extremis soldier in sight, the former Kid Flash turned to his best friend and nodded. It was game time. With his signature acrobatics, Nightwing leapt off the catwalk and grappled down towards the enemy. Wally smiled as he raced around the lower levels on foot, knocking out bad guys with single punches as he ran.

Explosions boomed throughout the structure while the speedster found Black Widow fighting her way through the A.I.M. troops like a hot knife cutting through butter. Wally raced forward and punched one just as Romanov leaned back to dodge the guy's fist. Another attempted to shoot the two only to be dropped dead by an arrow in the head from Hawkeye. As all this was happening, Tony climbed into an empty suit and flew off in search of where Pepper was being held captive while Colonel Rhodes went to rescue the president.

Down on the lower levels, Captain America was faring pretty well against the extremis enhanced soldiers. Although the fact that they could regrow lost limbs was starting to get a little annoying, the time-displaced super soldier was nevertheless fighting through them relatively easily. He made it up to a platform just below where President Ellis was suspended in the Iron Patriot suit. Before he could attempt to rescue the man, Rhodes swung over from the edge of a falling shipping container and grabbed on as the container crashed into the barrels of oil on the lower deck and exploded.

Rhodes angled the suit's repulsors and blasted one of the cables holding the President in the air. The two of them swung down towards the platform where Captain America was standing. As the two reached the edge of the platform, Cap swung his shield at the remaining cable and raced forward to make sure neither of them fell off the edge of the platform. Colonel Rhodes and President Ellis quickly traded places, and in a few minutes Iron Patriot flew up to join the battle at last while Rogers escorted the newly-freed president to safety aboard the Quinjet.

* * *

**Before anyone complains about the other avengers getting involved in the events of Iron Man 3 (I doubt there will be a lot I'm just saying this in case anyone ****_does _****object to it), allow me to explain. I've chosen to include all of the Avengers bar Thor (who is up on Asgard giving his report to Odin about the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Suit to keep him out of the plot), because 1) even if, as mentioned in the movie, the U.S. government wants to show they can deal with the Mandarin without S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help, there's no way in my opinion S.H.I.E.L.D. or the other Avengers would just sit around after the Mandarin attacks Stark's mansion, let alone kidnaps the president. So I'm having everyone contribute to the big final battle in some capacity. **


	25. Battle of the Norco

**Since we're still in the events of Iron Man 3, I felt it would be fitting for the chapter covering the rest of that movie's final battle to focus on the guy himself. And this is probably one of the longest chapters so far. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.**

* * *

**Chapter 24: Battle of the Norco:**

Norco Oil Tanker

December 23rd, 2012

9:30 A.M. EST

While Captain America escorted the president to the waiting Quinjet, Stark was running through the catwalks after the moving platform holding the pile of rubble that his girlfriend and former assistant Pepper was pinned under. He heard everyone else's status reports over their comms, but he wasn't concerned with that at the moment. Right now, his only focus was on protecting Pepper.

"Pep, I got you," he said to Pepper as she flailed around above him, hanging from the platform by her pinned legs. "Relax. I've got you. Just look at me." Tony desperately tried to reach out and pull his girlfriend out from under the rubble she was trapped under, but he couldn't reach all the way. "Honey, I can't reach any further and you can't stay there, alright?" he told her as she reached out her arm to grab onto his. "You've gotta let go. You've gotta let go! I'll catch you. I promise."

Pepper reached down as far as she could stretch in her position, but just as she was within reach of Tony's hand, the platform she was on collapsed, sending her plunging past him into the raging inferno on the ground. Tony Stark could only stare down in horror as the woman he loved disappeared into the flames, oblivious to the shadow that flickered across the inferno in an instant just as she did. For a moment, he just stood there in shock, almost refusing to believe that he had failed to protect the woman he couldn't live without. Then a voice crackled over the comm.

"Stark," Wally's voice called out over the radio in everyone's ears. "I've got Pepper. She's alright." Though he would deny it later to his dying breath, Tony cried tears of joy when he heard those two words. But as he climbed back down to the walkway leading down towards the ground, Aldritch Killian appeared, unharmed (having regrown the limb Tony had cut off earlier thanks to the Extremis in his system), looking down at where Pepper had fallen.

"It's a shame," the madman remarked casually. "I would have caught her." Even though he knew Pepper was alive, Tony angrily sprinted towards Killian. As the Extremis-enhanced megalomaniac attempted to do a leaping kick at the billionaire, he ducked and slide along the walkway. He leapt back up in time to step into a newly arrived Iron Man suit. With his armor on, he charged into action.

Although he and Killian were evenly matched in hand to hand combat, Killian's super strength and superheated skin gave him an edge in their duel. Killian ripped off pieces of the suit as they fought their way across the upper levels. Tony soon had to switch suits and used the thrusters to knock his opponent up a few levels. After the billionaire landed a few hits, Killian used his Extremis-heated hands to pull the armor off Tony's leg and cut it off from the suit.

"Well here we are," he said smugly. "On the roof." He smirked, referencing the time he'd attempted to talk to Tony about his think tank, only to be brushed off and mocked by the (now significantly less) egotistical billionaire. As Killian heated to kill him, Tony ejected himself backwards from the suit seconds before impact. As Killian stood over him, they both turned their heads towards an inbound object flying towards the battle, which was now dying down thanks to the presence of the Avengers. Over the comms, Jarvis announced that the Mark 42 suit, which had been hit by a truck after rescuing the surviving crew of Air Force One, rapidly approaching the battlefield.

"I'll be damned," Tony whispered in both awe and anticipation. "The prodigal son returns." He climbed to his feet and braced himself for the arrival of his latest armor. His excitement dimmed when the advanced suit crashed into a railing as it braked and broke apart into multiple pieces once again. "Whatever," Tony sighed exasperatedly at that.

"You really didn't deserve her, Tony," Killian said, referring to Pepper, whose survival he was thankfully unaware of. "It's a pity," the megalomaniac added. "I was so close to having her perfect." Down below, Killian's Extremis soldiers had been dealt with and the rest of the Avengers were quickly making their way up the walkways towards the leader of A.I.M. The glowing man jumped down to the platform Tony had ejected himself on.

"You're right," Tony commented as Killian advanced slowly towards him. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Captain America jumped up several levels of walkways while Nightwing, Hawkeye, and Black Widow ascended the crane he was on with assorted grappling devices. Wally was no doubt racing up the structure on foot. "I don't deserve her," he added sadly, guilty he had failed to save her himself even though she was alive. "Here's where you're wrong," he continued. "She was already perfect." With that, he used the neutral link he'd created to control his suits with his mind to reassemble Mark 42 around Killian before order Jarvis to trigger the self-destruct.

Tony leapt off the crane and barely made it into a suit in time before the force of the explosion caused the central part of the structure to fall. The suit he'd leapt into was damaged, and so he couldn't fly off. But as the explosion collapsed, it brought the railing he'd ended up clinging to close enough to the lowest level of the dock for him to let go and simply drop safely to the ground. Thankfully, despite the damage from the explosion, the crane he'd been on didn't come crashing down. As Tony climbed to his feet, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Kid Flash, and Nightwing continued making their way down to the ground.

After staring at the remains of one of his helmets sitting in the fire for a minute, Tony's attention (along with everyone else's) was immediately drawn to the shipping containers near the Norco, where a burned and injured Aldritch Killian limped out of the flames. His skin was badly burnt and large portions of it were flaking off, revealing an explosive orange glow beneath.

"No more false faces," the man groaned. "You said you wanted the Mandarin? You're looking right at him. It was always me, Tony, right from the start. I AM THE MANDARIN!" But before Killian could throw his next punch, a heavy metal pipe knocked him back before anyone else could move. Tony glanced in awe at Pepper as she held the pipe in her hands.

"I got nothing," he said. Before anyone could make another move, a flying Iron Man suit came flying around the corner heading straight for Pepper and Killian. Realizing that because Pepper had the extremis in her system, she registered on the suit's scanners as a target, he ordered Jarvis to disengage the suit only to find that the radio had fallen out of his ear when he'd dropped to the ground. The suit raised its arm and prepared to hurl a repulsor blast at Pepper, but before it could fire she used parkour to leap up and punch a hole through the suit's chest with her bare hand.

Ripping off one of the arms, Pepper knocked Killian back further before using one of the suit's mini-torpedoes and a repulsor blast to destroy the madman for good. After a heartfelt conversation with Pepper, Tony told Jarvis to initiate the "Clean Slate protocol," and everyone stood and watched as the remaining suits in the "Iron Legion" self-destructed in the sky above them. As the armored suits exploded in the air, the heroes on the ground headed back to where the Quinjet was landing. After all the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, everyone was eager to head back to Avengers Tower and get some much needed sleep.

* * *

**And that's it for the action. Next chapter is basically going to be everyone chatting and really getting to know each other. Expect more Spitfire feels, and more interaction between Artemis, Nightwing, and the Avengers. I figured that with the whole battle going on, there wouldn't really be much room for everyone to chat and mingle, so to make up for it, next chapter is going to be full of it. **


	26. The Day After

**Chapter 25: The Day After:**

Avengers Tower

December 24th, 2012

8:00 A.M. EST

Artemis mumbled as she rolled over in bed. After all the chaos of the past day, everyone fell asleep within a few hours of their arrival at "Avengers Tower." After months of grieving for Wally, it felt good to fall asleep with him by her side. Groggy and still half asleep, she leaned over to put her hand on Wally's stomach, only to keep going through empty air until it brushed against the sheets. Her eyes popped open in fear as she bolted up in bed. _No, _she thought to herself in panic as she recalled the events of the previous day. _It can't have been a dream. _

Before she could start speculating on whether or not she and Nightwing had been abducted by the League of Shadows, her eyes stopped on a piece of paper lying on the bed where Wally had been the night before. Carefully, fearful that she'd imagined everything, she opened it up and read.

_"__Merry Christmas, Beautiful,_

_Don't panic, yesterday wasn't a dream. We were all exhausted after the craziness of it all, so we slept the whole afternoon and through the night. I just woke up but I wanted to let you sleep, so I'm in the kitchen making us breakfast. _

_Love, _

_Baywatch."_

Artemis breathed a sigh of relief just as Wally walked into the room carrying two trays full of food.

"Morning, babe," he said as he came over and handed her one. "I made you breakfast in bed." She waited until he set down his own tray and climbed back into bed before giving him a punch in the shoulder.

"We've been back together for a day and you almost made me panic that I imagined the entire thing." she commented before pulling him in for a hug. "Don't scare me like that again."

"I'll try not to, babe," Wally replied with a smile as he wiped the tear that had welled up in her eye. "I missed you so much," he added. "Every day I've been here in this universe I was afraid that everyone would move on, that it would take me so long to get home that by the time I did, you'd be with someone else."

"But we're here now," she reminded him happily. "I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you." With that, the two of them started eating their breakfast and talking about what had been going on for both of them in the last six months. Wally was glad to hear that everything had gone smoothly for Artemis with going back to school. Artemis laughed uproariously at all the strange situations he'd gotten into with the Avengers. They were about to start discussing baby names when their romantic morning was ruined by a familiar British-accented voice coming up from the ceiling.

"Good morning, Mr. West, Ms. Crock," Jarvis greeted warmly.

"Morning, Jarvis," Wally replied grumpily. "I take it everyone else is already awake?"

"Of course, sir," the A.I. replied. "The Avengers rose at their usual times. Mr. Grayson awoke shortly after agents Barton and Romanov, and joined them in their morning training routine. Thor returned from Asgard fifteen minutes ago. Everyone is currently waiting for you in the lounge."

"There goes spending the whole day in bed," he commented dryly to Artemis as he stood up from the bed. "Having a whole day to ourselves would have been fun."

"We'll have to do it another time then," she responded with a smirk while she got up as well. "So where exactly is Jarvis? I get that he's this universe's equivalent to Alfred, but if he's always monitoring the Tower, then when does the guy sleep." Before Wally could explain, the disembodied voice beat him to the punch.

"Actually, Ms. Crock," Jarvis explained, "I am an artificial intelligence created by Mr. Stark to oversee the computer mainframe for his private residence and the Avengers Tower, as well as serve as his copilot while he is wearing the Iron Man armor."

"Basically like a cross between Alfred, Blue Beetle's scarab A.I., and the announcer voice for all the Justice League's computer systems," Wally summed up as they walked through the hallways of the Tower toward the lounge. By now, the reconstruction and renovations to the Tower after the Chitauri invasion had been completed, and they emerged from the elevator into the multi-level area used by the team for parties and other social events. When the team wasn't hosting a function of some sort, the space served as a place for the team to come and just sit and talk.

On the elevator ride up, Artemis couldn't help but think about how impressive the Avengers actually were. They'd come together to stop an alien invasion, just like the Justice League had. But while the founders of the Justice League were all seasoned superheroes when they came together, the Avengers were all new to the fighting crime and saving the world game and still managed to fight off an alien invasion all by themselves. The Appelaxian invasion had been seven superheroes against seven golems. The Chiaturi had invaded Earth in droves.

That wasn't to say she thought the Avengers were better than the League of course, if anything, she felt that both teams were equally impressive in their own ways. When they walked out of the elevator and the conversations began, she could see how Wally got along with almost everyone. He, Iron Man, and the Hulk were all fellow scientists. Captain America was a fellow fish out of water in regards to being forcibly torn away from his friends and love ones. Thor was a lot like Kaldur, always polite and unfailingly kind and heroic. The only ones she couldn't figure out were Hawkeye and Black Widow. Those two were enigmas, but according to Iron Man, they were always like that.

"And here come the lovebirds at last!" Tony shouted jovially as the two of them walked up the stairs to the upper level. After introducing Artemis to Thor and Bruce, the group moved on to trading stories of everyone's outrageous antics. Laughter echoed throughout the lounge at each hilarious story. Everyone had a blast listening to each other's comedic escapades. After lunch, the conversation turned towards getting the three young superheroes home.

Although most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists involved in the A.R.M.O.R. Program were on leave for Christmas, Bruce, Tony, and, after a brief phone call and a ride from Thor, Dr. Selvig all insisted that they send the trio home tonight. They figured that since the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Suit worked, it would be perfect timing for them to return to their own universe in time to celebrate Christmas with their families. Nobody could argue with that.

* * *

**Just a few more chapters, ladies and gentlemen. After months of writing this out, Secret Identities is nearing its conclusion. And for those wondering how Nightwing feels about the Avengers and the Marvel universe, the next chapter will be from his POV, so you'll find out soon enough. **


	27. Final Stages

**Only 3 more chapters to go, ladies and gentlemen. Just a head's up, yes. There will be a sequel. But I'm not going to be working on it right away. I'm going to write the next two fics in my Acolytes of Chaos saga before I start working on the sequel for this story. I'll announce the title at the end of the last chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter 26: Final Stages:**

S.H.I.E.L.D. Research Facility, Location Classified

December 24th, 2012

11:00 P.M. Time Zone Classified

Nightwing pocketed the flash drive full of S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols and procedures that Nick Fury had given him earlier that day. Although a lot of what it did to stop super-criminals was already taken care of by the Justice League, the twenty year old vigilante was nevertheless impressed by the idea of S.H.I.E.L.D. An organization that dealt with the supernatural and extraterrestrial on a daily basis. That did the more covert things that the Team did, but with a whole lot more resources.

While the League and the Team did a lot of the same things that S.H.I.E.L.D. did, Nightwing was intrigued by the idea of setting up a similar organization in his own universe. One that would handle things like clean up and repairs after a battle against the Injustice League or The Light. That could evacuate civilians from the battlefield and serve as a Liaison between the Justice League and the rest of the world. So after he and Artemis had their first meeting with Nick Fury, he'd broached the subject with the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. himself.

The director had agreed to the idea, and even offered him a flash drive of S.H.I.E.L.D. files and protocols as a baseline to give him some ideas on how to get this organization started. Now, he and Artemis were waiting off to the side while Wally, Stark, Banner, and Selvig were finishing up their final calculations so that the three of them could all go home. Stark had assembled two additional O.R.P.H.E.U.S. suits so that they wouldn't have to cram all three of them into one suit.

Suddenly, Wally's face paled. _What happened? _Nightwing wondered as Iron Man leaned over and whispered something in the speedster's ear. Wally turned to the billionaire and said something else, but his friend was now facing away from him, so he couldn't read his lips. After an animated conversation between the two scientists, Wally walked over with a crestfallen look on his face.

"Guys," he began, "there's bad news, and there's worse news." _Well that doesn't sound good, _the younger hero thought to himself as his brow furrowed in concern.

"What happened?" he asked. After taking a deep breath, Wally replied.

"Tony did some calculations," he answered. "The energy source we use to power the suits emits low levels of gamma radiation. The amount of energy that it takes for the suit to jump between universes is dangerous to humans, but the suits have energy absorption panels that absorbs enough of the energy that what little remains is completely harmless to adults…"

"But it's enough to be lethal to an unborn infant," Nightwing finished his friend's sentence as he realized what Wally was trying to say. Sadly, the twenty-two year old nodded.

"Yeah," he replied grimly. "The only reason it didn't hurt the baby on the way here was because you were in there too, so you absorbed enough of it that what little didn't go into you didn't hurt the baby. The expanding cocoon thing helped, but Tony couldn't install it on the other suit because the cocoon fried the dimensional jumping program. Putting it on another suit would mean having to pump more energy into it to give it enough power to make the jump."

"So I can't go back home without killing our child, then?" Artemis asked, tears welling up in her eyes. "This is all my fault," she said as she buried her face in Wally's shoulder. "If I hadn't answered Dick's text saying he found a lead, he could have brought you home easily, and we wouldn't be in this situation."

"It's not your fault, Artemis," Wally reassured his girlfriend. "You didn't know, and after six months of grieving, you just wanted to be with me again. Nobody's blaming you for that. I'm not leaving you here by yourself."

"But what about your parents?" she asked. "Or Barry, Iris, and Bart? They've been grieving just as much as I have. They deserve to know you're okay."

"I'll just have to settle for sending them all a recorded message, then," Wally replied. "Dick can still go back safely, so we can just send our families a video explaining everything back with him."

"Wally…" Dick protested. He wasn't about to leave his two closest friends and their unborn child stranded in another dimension for who knows how long.

"Dick, don't," Wally interrupted. "Artemis and I are only stuck here until Tony can come up with a way to get around the problem. Everyone else back home is probably freaking out, wondering what happened to you and Artemis. You have to be the one to go back and let everyone know we're okay."

"Alright," Nightwing conceded. "Just don't take too long, you two." With that decision made, Wally and Artemis went to record messages for their families while Tony went about stuffing the remaining suits with crates full of S.H.I.E.L.D. tech Nightwing could use. The prototype destroyer gun that a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Coulson had blasted Loki with, a leftover Chitauri plasma rifle, the works. Half an hour later, Nightwing said goodbye to everyone before he climbed into the O.R.P.H.E.U.S. Suit. After carefully counting down the seconds, Tony flipped a switch, and the suits disappeared in a massive burst of blue fire.

* * *

**When I started writing this story, I had two different ideas for the sequel. Either Wally and Artemis would stay in the MCU for another year or so, or they would go back to the Young Justice universe and in the sequel they'd find a way to end up back in the MCU during the events of Thor: The Dark World. As I've worked on writing this fic, I've been torn on which path to choose. My biggest difficulty was that I couldn't figure out a good enough explanation for either idea that I felt would work. Then CyberActors15 suggested Artemis' pregnancy preventing them from returning in a review a few chapters for the suggestion, because a good reason for them to stay is easier to explain than a way for them to get back later without the suit would have been. **


	28. Welcome Home

**Only 2 more chapters after this one, ladies and gentlemen.**

* * *

**Chapter 27: Welcome Home:**

New Hampshire

December 25th 2016

12:01 A.M. EST

"Sensors are picking up an energy spike in New Hampshire," Robin reported. "The signatures are a match to the suits." Batman nodded and dashed to the Batmobile with his pupil right behind him. They weren't about to let The Light get to that signal before they did. It was time to find out what really happened to his son. After an hour of driving they pulled up to the coordinates provided by the Bat Cave's computer to a sight that they were afraid to hope for.

Batman jumped out of the car at the sight of Richard dragging a large metal suit up and out of the crater in the middle of the field. Without a word, the Dark Knight raced over and hugged his adopted son. Tim rushed up behind and joined in. Once the Bat family finished their semi-emotional reunion, the three vigilantes loaded the metal suits into the back of the Batmobile before driving back home to Gotham.

On the ride back, Dick explained at length what had happened to both himself and Artemis. The message from Kid Flash had indeed been genuine. Tim and Batman both gave tellingly worried frowns when Nightwing described his and Artemis' capture. Their worry dissipated slightly when he described how Wally had come to the rescue. Tim was thoroughly impressed when he heard about the battle at the Norco. But Batman still had one question.

"Then why didn't Artemis and Kid Flash return with you," the Gotham vigilante asked. Nightwing sighed. This wasn't going to be easy to explain.

"There was a complication with the interdimensional tech for the return trip," he replied. "And the consequences would have been lethal to the baby, so Artemis and Wally are staying behind until they can figure out a solution." Batman nodded as they drove into the Bat Cave. He'd suspected as much. Back in the Bat Cave, Richard opened up the suits and pulled out the technology and weapons hidden inside. Batman only raised an eyebrow at this, and his son replied that the Avengers had sent him home with a few parting gifts.

While Batman remained skeptical, he brushed that aside for another time. His son was alive. That was what mattered right now. Nightwing explained that Wally and Artemis had recorded messages for their families, but one look at the bags under his son's eyes, and Bruce Wayne insisted he get some sleep before doing anything else. Richard Grayson knew better than to argue with his adoptive father, and so went upstairs without protest as Bruce and Alfred shuffled him up to bed.

* * *

Central City

December 25th, 2016

9:30 A.M. CST

Later in the morning, Mary and Rudy west sat sadly at their kitchen table eating breakfast. This was their first Christmas without Wally. While the past few months had allowed them to cope, they missed their son. The holidays weren't as cheerful without him to light up the room with his funny stories or his corny jokes. They still went ahead and did all their usual Christmas traditions though, because they knew that's what their son would want. He wouldn't want them to spend the holidays moping.

Their reminiscing over past Christmases with Wally were cut short by a knock at the door. They were pleasantly surprised to find Richard standing at the door, holding a flash drive in one hand and his laptop in another. After inviting him in and giving him a hug, her son's best friend slid seamlessly into the conversation like he'd been there since sunrise. Eventually, he opened up his laptop and told them he had a surprise for them.

After inserting his thumb drive and pulling up a video, Nightwing leaned over and clicked play. As he was setting up, Mary thought that perhaps he'd made a compilation of videos of her son, but that thought vanished when the video actually played. She cried tears of joy as she listened to her only son telling them that he was alive. She and her husband looked at Nightwing in surprise and confusion when Wally mentioned that his friend and Artemis had gone to the other universe he was trapped in to bring him home.

Understanding dawned on her however, when Wally explained that there was a complication with the technology to bring him home, and at present it would be lethal for his and Artemis' unborn child for them to come back now.

"I'm not leaving Artemis alone over there," video Wally explained in a bittersweet tone. "So we're staying here until we can figure out a solution. I just wanted to tell you I'm alive. You deserve to know I'm alright. Mom, Dad, I love you guys. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." By the time the video ended, Mary West was crying. Her husband looked like he was on the verge of tears himself. But these weren't tears of sorrow. Sure, their son and his girlfriend were trapped in another dimension for who knows how long, but he was alive. For now, that was enough.

They stood up and pulled Nightwing in for a hug, whispering their gratitude for bringing them hope that they would see their son in person again. After copying the video over to their computer, he went on to explain his and Artemis' adventure into the other universe, and what they'd heard from Wally about what he'd been up to. After a few hours with the Wests, he headed back to Gotham to deliver the news to Artemis' mother.

All things considered, Paula handled the news surprisingly well. While she was still angry with Nightwing for faking her daughter's death and leaving her in the dark, she at least trusted that the video was indeed genuine. While she was upset at Artemis' recklessness, she couldn't blame her. At least she and Wally were together and safe. Nightwing freely admitted that he and Artemis had been reckless, and their actions had delayed Wally's return home. But considering the alternatives, things could have been a whole lot worse.

* * *

**Almost done. Just one more chapter and then the epilogue. I know there hasn't been much mention of the Light in this story, but I can say they'll have a bigger role in the sequel. **


	29. I Should Have Done This A Long Time Ago

**This is it, folks! The penultimate chapter. Grab your tissues and bring on the Spitfire feels. Just a heads up, this chapter skips ahead a few months and then the epilogue goes back in time a bit. You'll see what I mean. Enjoy this short but sweet chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter 28: I Should Have Done This A Long Time Ago:**

Avengers Tower

February 14th, 2013

5:00 P.M.

"I do," Wally said as he looked Artemis in the eyes. They'd been here over a month, and with no solution in sight, they'd realized that they might as well build a life here until either Tony figured out a way to get them home without harming their child, or their kid was old enough to make the journey, whichever came first. So once they realized that they'd be putting down roots, Wally did what he should have done before his "death." He proposed.

Wally was perfectly willing to go out and get a new engagement ring if he had to, but apparently Artemis had been carrying the one he'd left back home around since she found it in his dresser, and between all the chaos of the battle with A.I.M., it somehow managed to stay in her pocket without falling out. Although all the other Avengers (minus Thor) thought that getting married on Valentine's Day was a bit cheesy and/or cliché, both of them insisted on it anyway, since it was their own private in-joke.

"That way you'll have a reason to not forget Valentine's Day," Artemis had said teasingly, referencing the four consecutive years Wally had forgotten. As they stood at the altar and said their vows, Wally couldn't help but think about how lucky he was. He'd been terrified that it would take him years to get home, and that by the time he finally did, Artemis would have moved on and ended up with someone else. But while it still might take a while, he and Artemis were together, they were going to be parents, and they were finally getting married.

True, he wished that they could be doing this with everyone from the Team and a few members of the Justice League in attendance, there was no point putting it off till they got home when they had no idea how long that would take. To compensate, Dr. Banner was recording the entire thing for Stark and Thor to send over in a small capsule full of messages for their families. When the minister finished asking Artemis, she said the two words he'd been waiting to hear for months.

"I do," she said with a warm smile." Wally smiled back, then deliberately broke out into the goofiest grin he possibly could as the minister said the word they'd been waiting to hear all day.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife," the minster finished. "You may now kiss the bride." _With pleasure, _Wally mouthed as he leaned in and kissed Artemis. The assembled guests (consisting of the Avengers, Director Fury, Commander Hill, Agent Hand, Dr. Selvig, and the rest of the scientists from the A.R.M.O.R. Program.) applauded as they walked down the aisle to start their honeymoon. Now that they were staying here long term, Wally was thinking of asking Fury for help setting up fake records for him and Artemis to get jobs outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. As fun as being a secret agent was, he didn't want that to be his only option for a career if they were going to be in this universe for a few more years.

As they climbed into the limousine that Stark had provided for them, Wally leaned over and gave his wife another kiss. Though their future was uncertain, he knew they would get through it. They were going to be amazing parents. They would figure out a way to get home, and they would do it together, as husband and wife.

"I should have done this a long time ago," he said with a chuckle as they rode off into the sunset, deliberately echoing the words he'd said just before their first kiss.

"No kidding," she replied knowingly as she pulled him in for another kiss.

* * *

**I left a lot of the details about Wally and Artemis' wedding vague because everyone has their own expectations so I just decided to leave the details to your imaginations and let you all imagine what the decorations and attire look like in your own mind. I plan to have the epilogue up between tonight and tomorrow morning. Please hold all questions about the sequel until then.**


	30. Transplant

**The final chapter ladies and gentlemen. This is the end.**

* * *

**Epilogue: Transplant:**

Location Unknown

January 2nd, 2017

11:00 A.M. Time Zone Unknown

"What is this about, Nightwing?" Amanda Waller asked as she and her guards faced the twenty year old vigilante in the abandoned warehouse they were having this meeting in. "I know this isn't League business because we wouldn't be meeting like this if it were."

"I have a proposal for you, Ms. Waller," Nightwing replied, his attitude deceptively friendly. He knew that the former warden of Belle Reve penitentiary was as ruthless as Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., perhaps even more so. But for his idea to get off the ground, he needed her on board. The Justice League and the rest of the Team wouldn't like what he was doing, and when they found out would probably compare it to Kaldur and Artemis' undercover mission last year. But this time, it was different.

The League and the Team couldn't be everywhere at once, and with Lex Luthor in the running for U.N. secretary general and more likely to win each passing day, there needed to be an international task force that would pick up what the League couldn't that wasn't on the Light's payroll. That was why he and Waller were meeting here. Her response snapped him out of his thoughts.

"What kind of proposal?" she asked cautiously. _She's testing me, _he knew. _Gauging what this is all about. Whether it's something that's worth her time to get involved in. _

"The previous Kid Flash survived the Reach's MFD," he explained. "The energy launched him into another universe. He spent the last six months working on a way to get home. I found out when the prototype showed up on the Justice League's scanners. In that universe, there's a government agency that specializes in the grittier aspects of metahumans and alien tech. I figured our universe could use something similar. A group that would handle the spillover from the Justice League's battles in public while dealing with the shadier aspects of crime fighting and super villainy from the shadows."

"You want my help to get this up and running, then," Waller surmised. "I handle the dirty work my ruthlessness makes me so well known for while you deal with the intelligence gathering." It was a statement, not a question. _She's still got it, _Nightwing thought to himself as he nodded in confirmation.

"When I found Kid Flash's probe, I ended up taking a two day sojourn into that universe," he answered. "While I was there, I met with the director of that agency after helping thwart a terrorist plot to assassinate that universe's U.S. president. In return, he gave me some of their tech and files to give us a baseline to start out with."

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership," Amanda Waller replied with a smile. "Any ideas for the name?"

"Just one," Nightwing answered. "the Advanced Research Group Uniting Superhumans. A.R.G.U.S. for short."

* * *

**I know Amanda Waller is a lot more morally ambiguous in the comics and other DC shows. Her portrayal in this chapter and in the sequels is based on her portrayal in Young Justice, where she was far less ambiguous (she did get one appearance). That, and A.R.G.U.S., which she leads in the TV show Arrow, is portrayed in that series as a S.H.I.E.L.D.-esque organization. Essentially, the A.R.G.U.S. of the Secret Identities universe is an amalgamation of what I can research about them from the comics, their S.H.I.E.L.D.-like portrayal in Arrow, and the ranking system from Checkmate, a branch of Task Force X (Suicide Squad). **

**And thus, Secret Identities is over. But the story is not. It's been a blast writing Secret Identities, and my goal is to have the sequel, Cut Off One Head, up sometime between March and June. The story won't stop there, thought, my faithful readers. I have a whole trilogy planned. Secret Identities is just Part 1. I've got a lot of different fanfiction projects in the works, most of them being the remaining stories for my Acolytes of Chaos saga. I'm going to work on 2 Acolyte fics next, but my goal is to have Cut Off One Head uploaded by the end of the school year. I have not yet finalized the title for the third story in the trilogy but the working title right now is Agents of A.R.G.U.S.**


End file.
